Brazilian mongrels were impressive, they'd do it on their own. That they were getting the chance was remarkable enough.
Heinz Buckliger had said before that he had his doubts about the Nazis' racial doctrines. He and his people were practicing what he'd preached. Here they'd shown black and brown men as human beings.
Would they ever do the same with Jews? Susanna wasn't going to hold her breath. For one thing, in National Socialist dogma Jews and Aryans were natural enemies, like capitalists and proletarians in the dead lore of Communism. For another, Jews' craftiness made them all the more dangerous. And, for a third, Jews were thought to be extinct, so why bother rehabilitating them? Even the most radical reforms had limits.
Walther Stutzman used a couple of different portals to get into SS databases and see what the blackshirts were up to. He didn't like messing with them. Any time he poked around in there, he exposed himself to a certain risk of detection, even if he did have the proper passwords and some highly improper masking programs. Every so often, he went sniffing in spite of the risk. Not knowing what Lothar Prutzmann and his cohorts were up to was also risky.
Today at lunch, he started in at one of the usual places, a weak spot that had been in the software ever since his father put it there. If and when the Reich finally did go over to the long-promised new operating system, it would have weak spots, too. Walther had put a few into the code himself. Out of so many millions of lines, who would find those few? One of these days, his son Gottlieb could exploit them.
That was what he was thinking as he started the electronic journey toward Lothar Prutzmann's secrets. More from habit than for any other reason, he kept an eye on the monitor as the probe went through. When he saw an alphanumeric group that didn't look the way it was supposed to, he blinked. When he saw two, ice ran through him and he hit the ABORT key. If that wasn't a trap, he'd never seen one. Now he sat there wondering if it had caught him.
He didn't think so. He had programs that would muddy the trail, and he hadn't gone in far enough to be fully noosed…had he? He paused in indecision, something he didn't do very often. Then, reluctantly, he nodded to himself. Only one way to find out, and he badly needed to know.
He liked the second portal less than the first. It was closer to a busy stream of electronic traffic. If he made a mistake, he'd stick out like blood on the snow.Just like that, he thought unhappily. And if the bloodhounds were waiting for him here, too…
His finger stayed on the ABORT key all the way through the insertion process. If the hounds had been a little more subtle, they would have nabbed him the first time. He hated giving them another chance.
But, as far as he could tell, everything went fine now. He got inside the SS network without its being any the wiser. And, once he was inside, he could look at the other portal from the rear, so to speak. The trap pointed outward. He'd thought it would. People who designed traps like that were convinced of their own cleverness. They didn't think anyone could sneak up on them from behind.
And they had been very clever indeed, even if not quite clever enough. The more Walther studied their trap, the nastier it looked. If his probe had gone just a little farther through the portal, it would have been seized and traced back to its beginnings, and not one of his masking programs was likely to have done him much good. Oh, yes, the thing had teeth, sharp ones.
He wondered if he could draw those teeth, leave the trap seeming dangerous but in fact harmless. Shaking his head, he decided against it, at least for now. That wouldn't be something to ad-lib on a lunch hour. If he tried it, he would have to be perfect. The trapper would come back every so often to see what he'd caught. Everything would have to look fine to him.
Walther glanced down at his watch. Yes, it would have to be another time. People would start coming back from lunch pretty soon. He couldn't afford to take the chance of being seen doing that kind of work. And he was through the other portal. If he was going to look around inside Lothar Prutzmann's domain, he had to do it now.
Too much information. Not enough time to sift through it. That protected SS secrets as well as any encryption algorithm, probably better. If Walther couldn't find what he was looking for, what difference if it stayed in plain sight? You couldn't read what you couldn't find.
He did find proof of Prutzmann's hand behind the 'Enough Is Enough' article in the Volkischer Beobachter. Under other circumstances, that would have delighted him. As things were, he shrugged. If Heinz Buckliger didn't already know who'd put Dr. Jahnke up to writing that piece, he was a fool. So far, he hadn't acted like one.
Still…A message revealing in which SS directory all the dirt on 'Enough Is Enough' lurked wouldn't hurt. Walther had ways of bouncing such a message through the data system till it became impossible to trace. He used them.
And he was back to working on the new operating system by the time his boss lumbered back into the office. Gustav Priepke stuck his head into Walther's cubicle, saw what he was up to, and nodded approval. 'That goddamn Japanese code really will save our asses, won't it?' he said.
'We've got a chance with it, anyhow,' Walther answered.
'Good. Good. That was a hell of a good idea, using it,' Priepke said. Walther started to thank him, but just nodded instead. Unless he misread the signs, his boss had forgotten whose idea it was in the first place. Because it was working so well, Priepke had decided it was his.
Had things been different, Walther wouldn't have let him get away with that. As they were…As they were, if Priepke was angling for fame and glory, he could have them. Walther didn't want them. They were no good to him. The less he was in the public eye, the better he liked it. And if his boss got a bonus and a raise, that was all right, too. The Stutzmans had plenty. They needed no more. No Jew dared be or even think like a money-grubber these days.
'We'll do fine,' Priepke said, as if Walther had denied it. 'We'll do just fine.'
'Of course we will,' Walther said.
When Gottlieb Stutzman came home for a weekend's leave from his Hitler Jugend service, Esther was amazed at how brown and muscular he'd become. 'They work us pretty hard,' her son said, scratching at his mustache. That was thicker and more emphatically there than it had been a year before, too. He wasn't a boy any more. He was visibly turning into a man.
'How is it?' Esther fought to keep worry out of her voice. She'd been afraid ever since Gottlieb left the house. She hadn't feared he would be caught, or hadn't feared that any more than usual. He looked like an Aryan. He wasn't circumcised. He had the sense to keep his mouth shut about his dangerous secret.
But in a setting like that, suffused with the propaganda of the state and the Volk, what would have been easier than turning his back on the secret? It was a burden he didn't have to carry. Nobody did. If you chose to forget you were a Jew, who could make you remember?
Esther's fear swelled when Gottlieb shrugged and said, 'It's not so bad.' But then he went on, 'Or it wouldn't be, if I weren't different.' Esther let out a heartfelt sigh of relief. He accepted that difference, then. She'd thought he had, she'd thought he would, but you could never be sure. He gave her a quizzical look. 'What was that for?'
'Just because-and don't you forget it,' Esther answered.
'Sure.' Gottlieb, plainly, was humoring his mother. Since he hadn't had much practice, he wasn't very good at it. The doorbell rang. 'Who's that?' he asked as Esther started for the door.
'Alicia Gimpel,' Esther answered. 'She was going to visit Anna and sleep over tonight. They set it up before we knew you were coming home, and it was a little late to cancel by then. I hope you don't mind?'
'Why should I?' He laughed. 'It's not like I'm going to pay any attention to Alicia one way or the other.'
'All right,' Esther said. Gottlieb no doubt admired one pretty Fraulein or another. Of course he did-at seventeen, what was he but a hormone with legs? No matter whom he admired, though, if he was as serious as he seemed to be about staying a Jew and passing it on, he would marry another Jew. Seventeen would pay no attention to eleven, but twenty-four might find eighteen very interesting. Seven years, right now, would feel like an eternity to Gottlieb. To Esther, they felt just around the corner.
She opened the door. There were Alicia and Lise. As Alicia came in festooned with sleeping bag, change of clothes, and the other impedimenta of a sleepover, Anna bounded down from upstairs to greet her. Through the squeals, Lise said, 'It's a shame they don't like each other-tragic, in fact.'
'It is, isn't it?' Esther said. They both smiled: here, for once, was irony that didn't hurt. Esther waved back toward the kitchen. 'Come in and have a cup of coffee and say hello to Gottlieb. He got a free weekend and came home to visit.'
