The Man with the Iron Heart

really wanted him dead. They wanted him dead enough to put some real work into killing him: into killing him in particular because he was what and who he was, not because he was some Nazi diehard.

I should thank them for the compliment, he thought wryly. He’d got under their skin. He’d hurt the enemy enough to make the enemy want to hurt him back. No, to make the enemy need to hurt him back. This wasn’t just war. It was politics, too. American elections were coming up soon. If the Amis could show off photos of Reinhard Heydrich’s mutilated corpse, their hard-liners would win votes.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!” It would go out over the radio, in the newspapers, in their magazines. And the oppression of Germany would go on.

Clausewitz said war was an extension of politics by other means. Hitler had often-too often-forgotten that. Now that the Fuhrer was dead, Heydrich could look at him and his policies more objectively. And Heydrich didn’t have the mighty Wehrmacht at his back. The mighty Wehrmacht was rotting meat and scrap metal. Heydrich couldn’t bludgeon foes out of the way. He had to keep stinging them, wasplike, till they decided Germany was more trouble than it was worth and left on their own.

He wanted to stay alive, too. He wanted to enjoy the free Germany he’d created. And he especially didn’t want to die if dying gave the occupying powers an advantage and hurt the rebuilding Reich.

Hans Klein walked in. “They aren’t coming after us.”

“Good.” Heydrich nodded. “I didn’t think they would. We spent a lot of time and a lot of Reichsmarks making the holes in the ground that lead in here look like holes in the ground that don’t go anywhere.”

“When you’re playing bridge, one peek is worth a thousand finesses,” Klein said. “When you’re playing our game, one traitor’s worth a thousand tonnes of camouflage.”

Heydrich grunted. Nothing like a cynical noncom to put his finger on your weakness. “We haven’t had to worry about that so far,” the Reichsprotektor said.

“We’ve been lucky so far,” Klein retorted.

Again, Heydrich couldn’t very well tell him he was talking through his hat. Klein damn well wasn’t. At least Heydrich had the sense to see as much. Plenty of people who’d yelled “Heil Hitler!” as loud as anybody were serving the Anglo-Americans now. Or they were licking the lickspittle Frenchmen’s boots, or else kowtowing to Stalin the way they’d once bowed down to their proper Fuhrer.

When such folk made conspicuous nuisances of themselves, Heydrich’s men disposed of them. A sniper from 800 meters, a bomb planted in an automobile or posted in a package, poison at a favorite eatery…There were all kinds of ways. Collaborators knew they had to be careful. Some of them decided the risk wasn’t worth it and quit collaborating. Every one like that counted as a victory.

But the enemy also had his weapons. One of them was cold, hard cash. Heydrich remembered the huge price on his head. A million U.S. dollars now, wasn’t it?

Would that be enough to tempt some sniveling little Judas who’d got sick of staying cooped up in a hole in the ground for years? Heydrich nodded to himself. A million dollars was plenty for a traitor to buy himself an estate and a Rolls and the kind of pussy that went with an estate and a Rolls. Then all he’d need to worry about was his former friends’ revenge.

He might figure the resistance movement would die with Heydrich. He might be right, too, though the Reichsprotektor didn’t think so. If the resistance had gone on after Hitler died, it would go on after Heydrich, too. Jochen Peiper was more than capable in his own right-and freedom for Germany was more important than any one man.

Which didn’t mean treason couldn’t hurt. “People do have to keep their eyes open,” Heydrich said.

“That’s right,” Klein agreed. “You can’t push it too hard, though, not when we’ve all been down here so long. Folks stop listening to you. Anything you have to say over and over starts sounding like Quatsch… uh, sir.”

“And you not even a Berliner,” Heydrich said with a mock-sorrowful shake of the head. But the slang word for bilge was understood all over Germany these days. After some thought, Heydrich nodded much more seriously. “That is one of the troubles with a fight like this. Well, if you think the warnings get to where they do more harm than good, let me know.”

“Will do, Herr Reichsprotektor,” Klein promised. Heydrich had no doubt he would, too. Klein was solid. You couldn’t win a war without leaders, but you also couldn’t win it without reliable followers. Heydrich would have paid a reward of his own to bring in more just like Hans Klein.

Meanwhile…“We’ve lost one doorway. We’ve still got plenty. If they think we can’t hurt them now-they’ll find out.”

November 5. Election day. Sunny but chilly in Anderson. Early in the morning, Jerry Duncan and his wife made the ceremonial stroll from their house to the polling place a couple of blocks away. Sure enough, two or three reporters and their accompanying photographers stood waiting on the sidewalk.

“Wave to the nice people, Bets,” Jerry said in a low voice, and followed his own advice.

Betsy Duncan did, too. Also quietly, she answered, “I know what to do. It’s not like this is the first time.”

“Nope,” Jerry agreed. The one who’d be sweating rivets was Douglas Catledge. Duncan didn’t think the Democrat had ever run for anything before he came back from the war.

“Who you gonna vote for, Congressman?” one of the reporters called.

“Who do you think, E.A.?” Jerry said. E. A. Stuart grinned. One of the other reporters laughed out loud. It was funny, and then again it wasn’t. About every other election, you heard of some little race-school board, maybe, or town councilman-decided by one vote. Sometimes it was decided when-oops! — one candidate chivalrously voted for his opponent. Like any serious politician, Jerry believed in winning more than he believed in chivalry.

The polling place was in the auditorium of an elementary school. Jerry shook hands with people in there till an election official-a skinny old lady and undoubtedly a Democrat-said, “No electioneering within a hundred feet of the polls.”

“I wasn’t electioneering-just meeting friends,” Jerry lied easily.

He got his ballot, went into a booth, and pulled the curtain shut behind him. After he’d marked his ballot, he folded it up and gave it to the clerk in charge of the ballot box. That worthy stuffed it into the slot. “Mr. Duncan has voted,” he intoned ceremoniously. Betsy came out of her booth a moment later. The clerk took her ballot, too. “Mrs. Duncan has voted.”

Flashbulbs from the photographers’ cameras filled the dingy auditorium with bursts of harsh white light. The walk back to the house was attended only by E. A. Stuart. Jerry’d hoped he would get to be an ordinary human being on the way home, but no such luck.

“What will you do if the Republicans win a majority today?” Stuart asked.

“Celebrate,” Betsy answered before Jerry could open his mouth.

Chuckling, Jerry said, “She’s right. You can write it down. I think the first thing we’ll do after that is try and bring our boys home from Germany.”

“President Truman won’t like it,” E.A. Stuart predicted. Jerry tried to remember his full handle, but couldn’t. It was something ridiculous and Biblical-he knew that. No wonder he went by his initials.

“Truman’s had a year and a half to fix the mess,” Jerry said. “He hasn’t done it-not even close. Things are worse now than they were right after the surrender. If he won’t get cracking on his own, we’ll just have to make him move.”

“And if the Democrats hold on?” Stuart asked. Jerry and Betsy Duncan made identical faces. The reporter laughed. “I can’t quote expressions, folks,” he said.

“Awww,” Jerry said, and E. A. Stuart laughed again.

He tried another question: “Would you oppose the occupation so strongly if Diana McGraw hadn’t mobilized opinion against it?”

Betsy’s step faltered, ever so slightly. She was jealous of Diana. Jerry hadn’t given her any reason to be, but she was. (What she didn’t know about a few young, pretty clerk-typists back in Washington wouldn’t hurt her.) He picked his words with care: “Of course Mrs. McGraw comes from my district.” He stressed