He got to his desk late. Analysts and secretaries-and Wehrmacht officers, too-kept stopping him in the corridor to shake his hand and tell him they were glad to see him. He was slightly dazed by the time he finally did walk up to the familiar battleship-gray metal desk. He hadn't realized so many people cared.
He was just about to sit down in his squeaky swivel chair when Ilse spotted him. 'Oh,Herr Gimpel, I'm so happy you're back!' she squealed, and ran up to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. Then she laughed. 'Now I've got lipstick on you, the way I do with Willi.'
Willi chose that moment to have a coughing fit. Heinrich would have, too. Ilse turned and made a face at her lunchtime lover. She pulled a tissue from her purse and rubbed at Heinrich's cheek. She drew back, looked him over, and rubbed a little more.
'There! All better,' she said briskly.
'Is it?' Heinrich said. She nodded. He was almost as much an object to be dealt with for her as he had been for the Security Police. Her ministrations were a lot more enjoyable, though.
Off she went. Heinrich sat down. The chair did squeak. He tried to remember what he'd been doing when the blackshirts grabbed him. Before he could even come close, Willi stalked over and spoke in a mock-tough voice: 'Trying to steal another woman of mine, are you?'
Heinrich hoped it was just mock-tough. He said, 'The only thing I'm trying to do is mind my own business and have people leave me alone. Up till now, I never realized how hard that was.'
Willi laughed and slapped him on the back. 'All right. I can take a hint.' Heinrich wasn't at all sure Willi could. But his friend-and in spite of everything, Willi did still seem to be his friend-went back to his desk and got to work. With real relief, Heinrich did the same. He knew he wouldn't accomplish much this morning. It would be like coming back from vacation: he'd need to figure out what had gone on while he was out before he could do anything useful.
Here, what had gone on while he was out couldn't have been more obvious if it had marched by with a brass band. The Americans were kicking up their heels. They took Heinz Buckliger's policy for weakness. Payments were lagging. Excuses were some of the plainest lies he'd ever seen. Over on the other side of the Atlantic, they were finding out how much they could get away with.
So far, they seemed to be doing exactly that. Panzers hadn't rolled out to plunder the countryside-or to surround the American legislature and bureaucrats in Omaha and make them cough up what was due the Reich. Haldweim would have arrested people. Himmler would have machine-gunned people. Up till now, Heinz Buckliger hadn't even squawked.
If I were running things…But Heinrich wasn't. He wondered if anyone was, or if the people above him were just letting everything drift till they got orders from the Fuhrer. With worries closer to home, would Buckliger give orders about the USA?
'How about some lunch?' Willi asked. Heinrich looked up in astonishment. It couldn't be lunchtime yet. But his watch insisted it was ten to twelve. Willi went on, 'How about Admiral Yamamoto's?'
'Sounds good to me.' After cabbage stew in prison, any real food sounded good to Heinrich. Several big meals at home had only just begun to fill the hole inside him.
Shrimp tempura, teriyaki beef, and a plate of Berlin rolls enlivened with soy sauce and wasabi went some way toward hole-filling. Miso soup came with the meal. So did rice, which was to be expected, and potato salad, which never failed to leave him bemused. It was pretty good potato salad, but he didn't think the average Japanese came home to potato salad every night-or any night. But Admiral Yamamoto's wasn't the only Japanese place in Berlin that included potato salad in its meals, so maybe he was wrong. More likely, the restaurant owners just knew what their customers favored.
As usual, plenty of customers favored Admiral Yamamoto's. It drew people from every government agency within several kilometers, along with hotel clerks, shopgirls, and even the occasional Japanese tourist hungry for the tastes of home and discovering that the restaurant offered…some of them.
Heinrich ate, rather clumsily, with chopsticks. He sipped a good wheat beer, which went well with the spicy, salty lunch. And he listened to the people chatting at nearby tables. The tables were so close together, he couldn't help listening to his neighbors. One question he heard over and over was, 'Who are you going to vote for?'
Once, to his astonishment, he heard one trooper from the Waffen — SS division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler ask that of his pal. He was even more astonished when the second trooper answered, 'Me? Stolle, who else?' The tough young Aryan warrior sounded as if no other choice besides the radical Gauleiter of Berlin were possible. And the first man nodded, plainly agreeing with him.
'I wasn't sure what I thought of this whole election business,' Heinrich said. 'Sounds like everybody's excited about it, though.'
'Sure does,' Willi agreed. 'I'm as surprised as you are, maybe more so. And once the votes get counted, I can think of some other people who'll be more surprised yet.' He mouthed Lothar Prutzmann's name, but he didn't say it out loud, not in a restaurant full of strangers.
'Someone else might be surprised, too.' Heinrich mouthed the Fuhrer 's name, and Willi nodded. 'I don't think he expected Rolf to get so popular so fast.'
Willi nodded again, but he said, 'Still, the two of them ought to be able to work together. They're going in the same direction. It's not like that other fellow, the one who wants to turn back the clock.'
'No, I wouldn't think so. I sure hope not,' Heinrich said. 'The only thing that worries me is, what happens if the one of them gets jealous of the other?' Yes, not naming names was definitely a good idea. A few months earlier, Heinrich wouldn't have dared to talk about Party rivalries in a public place with or without names. Back in the days when Kurt Haldweim was Fuhrer, he would have been leery about doing it even if private.
As usual, Willi Dorsch had more nerve than he did (of course, Willi hadn't been hauled away from his desk by the Security Police, either). 'Buckliger should've run for the Reichstag himself,' Willi said. 'This way, Stolle will be able to say, 'The Volk chose me, but who chose you?' If elections really do stick, that could matter. It could matter a lot.'
'You're right,' Heinrich said. Willi might not notice something like his wife making a play for another man, but he missed very little when it came to politics.
And, when Heinrich tried to pay the tab, Willi wouldn't let him. 'Next time, fine, but not right after the Security Police let you go. You don't need to show me you're no cheap Jew. I believe it.'
'That's nice,' Heinrich said. Willi laughed at the irony in his voice. But it held more irony than Willi knew. It was especially nice that Willi thought Heinrich wasn't a Jew when he really was. Had Willi-or anybody else-been truly convinced he was, he wouldn't be full of Japanese food right now. He would have been disposed of, and so would his children.
Willi got to his feet. 'Shall we head back?' he said. 'I know you're dying to, with all the catching up you've got to do.'
Heinrich rose, too. 'I don't mind,' he said. Willi rolled his eyes and shook his head at such dedication. Heinrich meant it, though. He wasn't dying to get back to the office, but, as he'd thought a moment before, he would have been dying-or dead-if he couldn't go back. Given that stark choice, sitting at a desk and adding up long columns of figures didn't look bad at all.
Alicia Gimpel's class went out to eat their lunches and play on the schoolyard. She was about to walk out with the other boys and girls when her teacher called her name. She stopped. 'What is it,Herr Peukert?' she asked.
'You've only been back in school for a couple of days, Alicia,' he said. 'You don't need to work so very hard to make up all the assignments you missed.'
'But I want to get them out of the way!' Alicia exclaimed. 'Then I won't have to worry about them any more.'
'I'm not going to worry about them now, or not very much,'Herr Peukert said. 'You're a good student, and you've shown you can understand the material. That's what really matters.' He hesitated, then went on, 'And it's not as if you could help being absent, not with what happened to you. I'm glad you're back.'
'Thank you,Herr Peukert. I'm glad I'm back, too,' Alicia said. 'Are you sure it's all right about the work? I don't mind doing it.' Like her father, she was glad to have the chance to work.
'Yes, I'm sure.' The teacher hesitated again. Finally, nodding to himself, he asked, 'Has anyone given you a hard time about…about where you were, and why?'
'No, sir,' Alicia answered, which wasn't strictly true. Wolf Priller and a couple of other boys had teased her,
