In The Presence of mine Enemies

XII

Herr Peukert was talking about negative numbers when a clerk from the office came into the room and took him aside to speak with him. Alicia was glad for the break. Her head was spinning. When you added negative numbers you really subtracted, and when you subtracted negative numbers you really added? It sounded crazy, to say nothing of confusing.

"What?" The teacher, who had been speaking quietly, exclaimed in surprise. The clerk nodded and muttered something else.Herr Peukert shook his head. The clerk nodded again. The teacher sighed and shrugged. "Alicia Gimpel!" he said.

Alicia jumped up to her feet. "Ja, Herr Peukert?"

"Please go to the office with Fraulein Knopp here. Something has come up."

"Jawohl, Herr Peukert." Alicia wondered what was going on. It sounded as if her mother needed to pull her out of class for some reason or other. Had Mommy forgotten to tell her about a dentist's appointment, or something like that? She was usually good about remembering all kinds of things, but she had forgotten once.

The way Fraulein Knopp kept looking at her all the way back to the office made her wonder. When they were almost there, the clerk asked, "Are you really?"

"Am I really what?" Alicia asked. But the clerk didn't answer.

When they got to the office, Alicia was surprised to find Francesca and Roxane already there. They looked surprised to see her. Roxane asked, "Are you in trouble, too?"

"I didn't think so," Alicia said.

"If they call you to the office, you're in trouble." Roxane spoke with experience born of more mischief than both her sisters together had got into.

Fraulein Knopp went into the inner office, the principal's office. Alicia heard her say, "They're all here now."

But the principal-a gray-haired, severe woman named Frau Fasold-didn't come out. Half a dozen large men in black uniforms did. One of them had a gray mustache that made him look like the boss. Sure enough, he was the one who spoke up: "You will come with us immediately, children, until this question is answered."

Roxane wasn't one to let anybody, even an enormous officer in an intimidating uniform, get the better of her. She tilted her head back so she could look him in the eye and said, "What question?" Alicia was suddenly, horribly, afraid she already knew.

And sure enough, the officer said the worst thing in the world: "The question of whether your father, Heinrich Gimpel, is a Jew, and of whether the three of you are first-degree Mischlingen, subject to the same penalties as full-blooded Jews."Subject to being shot or gassed or anything else we feel like doing to you, he meant.

A terrified scream bubbled up in Alicia's throat. But before she could let it out and give everything away, Francesca screamed first, and her shriek was pure fury: "That's a lie!" She went on, just about as loud, "We're no damned, stinking, big-nosed, big-lipped, lying, cheating, germy Jews! And neither is Daddy! And don't you say he is, either!" She kicked the Security Police officer in the shin.

"Teufelsdreck!" he shouted. He swung back his hand as if to slap Francesca. Roxane grabbed it and bit him. He roared in pain. "You idiots!" he yelled at his men. "Seize them!" He had to yell, because Roxane let go of him and started screeching it was all a lie, too.

That told Alicia what she had to do. She added her voice to the clamor, and did her best to fight and to get away before one of the big men grabbed her. "Christ, they sure don't act like a bunch of kikes," the man said, panting with the effort of hanging on to her.

Francesca and Roxane, of course, were convinced they were no such thing. Alicia realized she had to act as if she were, too. It was the only chance she and her sisters had…if they had any chance at all.

Frau Fasold finally did emerge from her office. She disapprovingly surveyed the chaos in the outer room. Shaking her head, she fixed the officer with the gray mustache with an icy blue glare. "Really,mein Herr, " she said in a voice just as icy. "Is this disorder altogether necessary?"

Her manner could paralyze any student. It seemed to have the same effect on the Security Police man. "These are, uh, Jews, or, uh,Mischlingen, anyway," he said in a low voice. "We can't, uh, be too, uh, careful."

"These are children-and fine children, too, I might add,"Frau Fasold said. Even in Alicia's terror, that astonished her. The principal never had a good word for anybody.Frau Fasold went on, "Why didn't you bring panzers and helicopters and flamethrowers, too? Then you could have been safe." She all but spat her contempt in the blackshirt's face.

He turned red. "We have our orders, ma'am," he said stonily. "We have to carry them out."

"Orders for murdering children?" Frau Fasold said. "Why?"

The Security Police officer turned redder. "It is our duty."

"God help you, in that case," the principal told him.

He turned his back on her, the way a petulant second-grader might have. Unlike a petulant second-grader, he didn't get a swat for being rude. Alicia wished he would have. He deserved one. But nobody was paying any attention to what she wished. The officer with the mustache nodded to his men. "Take them away."

They had their orders. They carried them out. It was their duty.

Lise Gimpel had just got back from the drugstore when the telephone rang. She muttered to herself. She'd been about to make a fresh pot of coffee. The ringing phone didn't magically shut up, the way she wished it would. She went over and picked it up."Bitte?"

The first thing she heard was a car horn blaring. Was somebody playing a practical joke? Then, as traffic noises continued, she realized the call was from a pay phone on a busy street. "Lise, is that you?" a man asked.

"Ja. Willi?" she answered doubtfully.

"Dammit, I wish you hadn't said my name." Yes, that was Willi. But why was he calling from a pay phone and not from his desk? No sooner had the question formed in her mind than she found out, for he went on, "Listen, they've just arrested Heinrich for-for something completely ridiculous. I've got to go. 'Bye." He slammed the phone down in its cradle. The line went dead.

As if moving in a dream, Lise hung up, too. But it wasn't a dream. It was a nightmare, the worst nightmare she could have.Something completely ridiculous could mean only one thing, and it wasn't ridiculous, not to her. Like any Jew in Berlin, she'd rehearsed this disaster in her mind, hoping and hoping she would never have to use the plans she'd made. So much for that hope. She might not have long. They might be coming for her right now.

She reached for the telephone. It rang again before she could pick it up. She almost screamed. "Bitte?" she snapped. If it was some idiot salesman trying to get her to buy carpets…

"Frau Gimpel?" A woman's voice this, not a familiar one.

"Yes. What is it, please?"

"Frau Gimpel, this in Ingeborg Fasold, the principal at your daughters' school. I don't know how to tell you this, but…the Security Police have taken your daughters. They accuse them of being-forgive me for saying this-they accuse them of being part Jew… Are you there,Frau Gimpel?"

"I'm here." In her own ears, Lise's voice sounded far away, eerily calm. "They've arrested my husband, too. It's all a lie, a mistake, of course." She had to say that. She remembered she had to say that. Somebody might be-probably was-listening.

"Of course." To her amazement,Frau Fasold sounded as if she meant it. She added, "I think it's a shame and a disgrace that they should take children, no matter what. How can a child have done anything bad to anyone? Even if the childwere a Mischling, how could it? Nonsense. Pure Quatsch. Good luck to you."

"Thank you," Lise said in that same strange, calm voice. Her mind was racing a million kilometers a second.Mischlingen. They thought the girls were Mischlingen. She was pretty sure they'd arrested Heinrich as a Jew. That should mean they still believed she was an Aryan herself. If they kept on believing that, it might give her the chance to save everyone.

Or it might not help at all. She couldn't tell till she tried.

"If there's anything I can do,Frau Gimpel, please don't hesitate to ask,"Frau Fasold said.

She really did sound as if she meant that. Lise's eyes filled with tears. "Danke," she whispered. "This is a false accusation. We will beat it."

"I hope so," the principal said. "Again, good luck." She hung up.

So did Lise. Maybe people were more decent than she'd ever dared dream. Willi,Frau Fasold…Neither had had to say a word. Both had taken a chance in picking up the phone. But they'd done it.

Lise had her own ideas about how and why Heinrich had been arrested. But finding out if she was right would have to wait. It didn't make any difference, not when she had no time to lose. The blackshirts were liable to come here next, to see what evidence they could dig up against her husband. Or they might not worry about evidence, and simply act. If they did that, Heinrich and the girls were lost.

So they won't do that. You have to think they won't. And if they come looking for evidence, they'd better not find any. There wasn't much to find: nothing printed in Hebrew, no Sabbath candlesticks, nothing like that. She had pork ribs in the freezer right now.

But there were those pictures, the ones that had come down from Heinrich's father. Lise had never looked at them, but she knew what they were. They recorded the murder of a people, first on this side of the Atlantic and then, a generation later, on the other. They would have been illegal any time. Now they were worse than illegal-they were incriminating. Heinrich had kept them to show the girls if the time ever came, to remind them what the Nazis did to Jews who revealed themselves.

Well, the girls wouldn't need that kind of reminder any more. Now they had a better one.

She knew which filing cabinet in the study held the photographs. She didn't know which drawer they were in, or which folder. Would the knock on the door come before she found them? That would be the cruelest cut of all.

Here they were! She started to carry the manila folder to the fireplace, then hesitated. They might wonder why she had a fire going, or find the remnants of photos in the ashes. Lise knew she wasn't thinking too clearly. She also knew she couldn't afford to take any chances at all.

She brought the folder into the downstairs bathroom instead. She started tearing the photos into little bits and flushing them down the commode. She couldn't help seeing some of what she destroyed. Here was the raw stuff of history, disappearing one flush at a time. Part of her thought that wasn't right-there should be some record of the Germans' crimes. The rest…She was shaking and in tears by the time the job was done. Heinrich would have shownthat to little girls? The medicine was strong-too strong, she thought.

And she couldn't keep on shaking and crying. Even though this part of the job was done, she still had more to do. She went to the telephone and dialed. It rang six or seven times before a man said, "Bitte?" in a sleepy voice.

"Richard?" she said. "Richard, this is Lise Gimpel."

"What do you want? You woke me up," Richard Klein grumbled.

Woke you up? In the middle of the afternoon?Lise blinked at that. Then she remembered he was a trombone player. Musicians kept strange hours. "Richard, I need the name and number of that lawyer you used last year. You're not going to believe it, but Heinrich has the same problem you did."

"Gott im Himmel!" Klein exploded. He didn't sound sleepy any more. "Hang on. I'll get it for you." He came back on the line a minute later. "He's Klaus Menzel. Here's his phone number. Have you got something to write with?"

"Yes." Lise took down the number.

Richard said, "Good luck. Take care of yourself. Let us know what happens." Those were all things one friend could say to another without giving anything away to anyone tapping the line.

"Thanks," Lise said, and hung up. She could have made other calls: to her sister, to the Stutzmans, to Susanna Weiss, to a few-so few! — other people she knew. She could have, but she didn't. She had a plausible reason for calling the Kleins' house. She couldn't bring them under greater suspicion by doing so. That wasn't true of the others. She didn't want the Security Police wondering about her side of the family and her friends. Even if the worst happened to her, they could go on.

Besides, they would hear soon enough, one way or the other.

She called the lawyer and set up an appointment first thing in the morning-and got his promise to try to make sure nothing drastic happened before then. She'd just hung up the phone there when someone started banging on the front door.

She didn't need three guesses to know who that was. The banging went on and on. As she walked out to get the door, she wondered if she would be able to keep that appointment after all.

Susanna Weiss sat on her couch, a glass of Glenfiddich in her hand. The news was on, but she couldn't pay attention to Horst tonight. She took a long pull at the scotch. It wasn't the first one she'd had. It wouldn't be the last one she intended to have, either. If she felt like hell in the morning-and she probably would-well, that was why God made aspirin.

"Heinrich," she muttered, and shook her head in wonder mingled with despair. When Maria Klein asked her to meet for a drink, she'd known something was wrong. Something, yes, butthat? She shook her head again.

Of them all, Heinrich Gimpel was the last one she'd expected to get caught. He was the one who never took chances, who never seemed to have the nerve to take chances. No Jew could afford to draw too much notice. But Heinrich often went out of his way to be not just solid and unexciting but downright boring. Susanna sometimes wondered what Lise, who was a good deal more lively, saw in him. She supposed something had to be there.

And now the Security Police had him. How hard were they leaning on him? How hardcould they lean on him? the Fuhrer had asked for information from him, after all. They had to know that. Even if he was a Jew, it should count for something…shouldn't it?

She finished her drink, got up, and poured herself another one. It all depended on how much they knew, or thought they knew. If they were sure Heinrich was what they said he was, they would go ahead and do whatever they wanted with-and to-him. The more doubts they had, the more careful they'd need to be. So it seemed to Susanna, anyway. They wouldn't want to tear answers out of a man who might be able to get his own back one day…would they?

They might not care. They might decide that, once they'd used him up, he wouldn't be able to do anything to them anyhow. Who in the Reich in the past seventy years had been able to do anything to the organization Lothar Prutzmann now ran? Nobody. Nobody at all.

Horst went away. Susanna couldn't remember a single thing he'd talked about. A game show came on, with a wisecracking host and a statuesque blond sidekick. Susanna usually turned off the televisor the instant the news ended. Tonight, she left it on, more for the sake of background noise than for any other reason.

The questions were stupid. Some of the answers the contestants gave were even stupider. And the way the people jumped up and down and squealed-men as well as women-made Susanna cringe.This was the Herrenvolk? This was the material from which the Nazis had forged a Reich they said would last for a thousand years?

"If this is the master race, Lord help the rest of the world," Susanna said. But what had the Lord done for the rest of the world? Given most of it German overlords, that was what. How could you go on believing in a God Who went and did things like that?

Susanna looked down and discovered her glass was empty again. That, fortunately, was easy to fix. The book-crowded living room swayed a little when she got up. She made it to the kitchen and back without any trouble, though-and she didn't spill the fresh drink, either. As for how and why you could go on believing in a God Who did dreadful things-people had been wrestling with that at least since the time of Job. She wasn't going to settle it one drunken, frightened night in Berlin.

And if she drank enough, maybe she'd even stop worrying. She set about finding out.

Heinrich Gimpel sat in a cell that held a cot whose frame was immovably set in the concrete of the floor, a sink, a toilet, and damn all else. Whenever he stood, he had to hang on to his trousers. They'd taken away his belt-his shoelaces, too.

Of course, the first thing they'd done when they got him here was yank down his trousers and his underpants. They'd grunted when they saw he was made the same way they were. One of them said, "Is that all you've got?" He supposed that sort of insult was meant to tear him down so he'd be easier meat when they really started questioning him. He wondered why they bothered. He was already about as frightened as he could be. He was so frightened, he reckoned it a minor miracle he had anything at all to show down there.

They hadn't beaten him-not yet, anyway. They hadn't drugged him, either. They'd just tossed him in this cell and left him alone. He didn't know what that meant. Were they working up something particularly horrible? Or were they unsure he was what they thought he was?

Think, Heinrich, dammit,he told himself. If he could change the mess he was in to any degree, it would have to be with his brains. But what were the odds hecould change it? Slim, and he knew as much. Still, he had to try.

If I were truly agoy,how would I act? He'd still be frightened. He was sure of that. If you weren't frightened after the Security Police grabbed you, you had to be crazy. But he would also be outraged. Howdared they think him a dirty Jew? The anger he generated was ersatz, but after a while it started to feel real. He wondered if actors worked themselves into their roles this way.

For the time being, he had no one for whom to show off his fine synthetic fury. None of the cells close by had anyone in it. No guards tramped past. Why should they? He wasn't going anywhere.

"I want a lawyer!" he said loudly. "This is all a stupid frame-up! Get me a lawyer!" Maybe nobody was listening. He wouldn't have bet on it, though. A Security Police prison was bound to have microphones.

After what seemed a very long time-he didn't have his watch any more-two blackshirts came up the corridor. One pushed a food cart. The other carried an assault rifle. "Stand away from the bars," he ordered in a bored voice. Heinrich obeyed. The man pushing the cart shoved a tray into his cell.

"I want a lawyer," Heinrich said again. "You've got to get me out of here. the Fuhrer himself has consulted me."

They ignored him. He might have known they would. How many prisoners had they seen? Thousands, without a doubt. How many had admitted they were guilty? Even one?

He ate what they gave him: cabbage stew with little bits of salt pork in it (did they think he would pick them out if he was a Jew?) and a chunk of brown bread. It wasn't as good as what he got at the canteen at work, but it wasn't a whole lot worse. He turned on the water in the sink and drank from the cupped palm of his hand till he'd had enough to cut his thirst.

Then he lay down on the cot on his back and stared up at the rough concrete of the ceiling. He hoped they hadn't grabbed Lise and the girls, too. He did his best to pray, but that didn't come easy. If God had let this happen to him, how reliable was He? But if you didn't believe, what point to staying a Jew?

Good question. He had no answer. He felt empty, useless. What happened to him now was out of his hands. He hoped it was in God's. He knew for certain it was in the Security Police's.

He fell asleep with his glasses on. He never heard the fellow with the cart retrieve his tray, which he'd left by the bars. He stayed asleep till a key clicked in the lock and half a dozen blackshirts burst in. "On your feet, you Schweinehund, you kike, you stinking sheeny!" they screamed.

Blearily, he obeyed. What time was it? Somewhere in the middle of the night, he thought.I have to keep saying no. Whatever they do to me, I have to keep saying no. If they killed him, they killed him. With a little luck-maybe a lot of luck-he could keep his family and friends alive.

The Security Police hustled him along the corridor. His pants fell down. They wouldn't let him pull them up again.

"I'm no Jew. I want a lawyer," he said.

"Shut up!" they shouted in unison. One of them stuck an elbow in his ribs. It hurt. He grunted. He'd never make a cinema hero, laughing at wounds that would kill the average hero. On the other hand, they could have done worse to him than they did.

INTERROGATION, said the sign over the door to the chamber where they took him. It wasn't quite, All hope abandon, ye who enter here, but it was, in the most literal sense of the words, close enough for government work.

They slammed him down into a hard chair and shackled him at wrists and ankles. They shone bright lights in his face. He'd seen this scene at the movies, too. The hero usually mocked his tormentors. Heinrich felt much more like screaming. He managed to keep quiet, which might have been the hardest thing he'd ever done.

"So, Jew…" said a voice from somewhere behind the glaring lights.

"I'm no Jew!" Heinrich exclaimed. "Jesus, are you people out of your minds?" The more offended and horrified he sounded, the better the chance he had…if he had any chance at all.

One of the blackshirts lifted his glasses off his nose. Another one slapped him in the face. His head snapped to the side. His ears rang. He blinked. It didn't do much good. Without glasses, the whole room was blurry.

"Don't spew your lies," the voice said. "You'll only make it worse for yourself."

How could I?he wondered bleakly. "But you've got the wrong man!" he wailed. "I've worked for Oberkommando der Wehrmacht for almost twenty years now, and-"

Another slap. This time, his head jerked the other way. "Tearing down everything the Reich builds up," the voice growled.

An opening! "That'sa lie!" Heinrich said. "Look at my evaluations, if you don't believe me. I've served the Reich. I've never hurt it." That was true. He'd hated himself because it was true, too. Working for the regime might save him now, though. Quickly, desperately, he went on, "Ask the Fuhrer, if you don't believe me."

Raucous laughter from the interrogator. "Tell me another one, Jewboy. As if the Fuhrer cares about the likes of you."

One of the blackshirts who'd frog-marched him into the room muttered to the man behind the lamps. That man, whom Heinrich still hadn't seen, let out a scornful grunt. Then he shifted gears. He started hammering away at Heinrich's pedigree.

That pedigree was, of course, fictitious from top to bottom. The interrogator would have caught out a lot of Jews, grilling them about ancestors they didn't have. But Heinrich was a meticulous man. He knew the ancestors he didn't have as well as the ones he did-maybe better, since more about the fictitious ones had gone down on paper. He had to remind himself to throw in "I don't know" s every so often. How many people really could recite chapter and verse about great-great-grandparents off the tops of their heads? He didn't want the blackshirts to think he'd memorized a script, even if he had.

They slapped him a few more times. It stung, but he endured it. They weren't working anywhere near so hard as they might have to break him. Maybe they weren't sure what they had. Heinrich clung to that hope.

At last, after what could have been half an hour or three hours, the head man said, "Take the kike back to his cell. We'll have another go at him later."

Back Heinrich went. He could have done without that promise from the interrogator. But he hadn't told the Security Police anything. And they still hadn't roughed him up too badly.It could be worse, he thought. On his way out of an interrogation, that would do.

Alicia Gimpel envied her sisters. No matter what the Nazi matrons asked them, they couldn't give anything away. When they denied they were Jews, they believed those denials from the bottom of their hearts. Some of the blackshirts would remember taking them out of school for a long time.

The matrons called this place a foundlings' disciplinary home. The other children in here were ragged and scrawny, but very clean. The whole building reeked of disinfectant. They'd separated the Gimpel girls, maybe to keep them from coming up with a story together. For Francesca and Roxane, there wasn't any story to come up with. They were genuinely outraged at what was happening to them. Alicia had to pretend she was, too. If she could manage that, she had a chance. She might have a chance, anyway.

They'd put her in a room with a sharp-faced, stringy-haired blond girl named Paula. "What are you here for?" Paula asked.

"You won't believe it." Alicia assumed somebody was listening to everything she said.

"Try me." The other girl's smile showed pointed teeth. "I burned down my schoolroom." She spoke with nothing but pride.

"Wow!" Alicia wasn't sure she believed that. Maybe Paula was bragging. Or maybe she was trying to get Alicia to talk big, too, and hang herself. Could an eleven-year-old be an informer? Of course she could.

"So what did you do?" Paula asked.

"They say I'm a Jew-or they say my father is, anyway," Alicia answered. That was the truth; admitting it couldn't hurt.

Paula's pale blue eyes widened. Now she was the one who said, "Wow!" and then, "That's so neat! I didn't think any of you people were left. The way the Nazis go on, they got rid of you. If you stayed ahead of 'em, more power to you."

She sounded as if she meant it. But then, if she was an informer, shewould sound that way.I can't trust her, Alicia reminded herself. She said, "That's what they say, but it's a lie. I'm not, and Daddy isn't, either."

"Sure he's not." Paula's smile was knowing. "You've got to say that, don't you? If you say anything else, it's the showers or a noodle, right?"

That was what Alicia was afraid of. But she couldn't even show that the thought had crossed her mind. "They wouldn't do that to me!" she exclaimed. "I haven't done anything, and I'm not what they say I am!"

"Maybe you're not," Paula said. "What the hell-I don't know. But if they decide you are, you are, whether you are or not. You know what I mean?"

Whether she was an arsonist or not, she was a perfect cynic. How many brushes with the authorities had she had? How many of them had she won? More than a few, or Alicia would have been astonished. But not all, or she wouldn't be here. Alicia knew perfectly well what she meant, too. Here, though, she had to pretend she didn't. If she'd been seized for something she wasn't, none of these dire things would have occurred to her. She said, "They can't do that! It'swrong! " Maybe fear sounded like anger. She hoped so, anyhow.

All Paula said was, "When has that ever stopped them?"

Alicia had no answer, not at first. That had never stopped them. But then hope flared. "The new Fuhrer won't let them do things like that."

"Buckliger?" Paula didn't try to hide her scorn. "You wait till the time comes. Lothar Prutzmann will eat his lunch." She might have been handicapping a football match, not politics.

"Oh, I hope not!" Alicia said. Even that might have been too much, when Prutzmann's Security Police had her. She said it anyway. She meant it. And she couldn't get in too much trouble for showing she was loyal to the Fuhrer… could she?

Paula only laughed. "You just watch. You'll find out." In the hallway, a bell rang. Paula bounced to her feet. "That's supper. Come on."

It was a wretched excuse for a real supper: cabbage soup, boiled potatoes, and brown bread without butter. Alicia could see why Paula was so skinny. She looked around for her sisters. Each of them had a matron hovering close. When Alicia looked back over her shoulder, she saw one behind her, too. She decided not to get up and try to see Francesca or Roxane. Why give the matron the pleasure of telling her she couldn't? These women looked as if saying no was their chief pleasure in life.

She did ask her matron, "When will you let us go back to our mother and father?" She made sure she mentioned Daddy as well as Mommy. Nobody seemed to think Mommy was a Jew. She wondered how that had happened.

The matron frowned. She had a long, sour face, a face made for frowning. At last, after a pause for thought, she said, "Well, dear"-Alicia had never heard a more insinceredear — "that depends on what they decide to do with your father, you see."

Maybe she hoped Alicia wouldn't understand that. And maybe, if Alicia hadn't been a Jew, she wouldn't have. She was, and she did, but she had to pretend she didn't.If they decide Daddy's an Aryan, you'll go home, too. But if they decide he's a Jew, he's dead, and your sisters are dead, and so are you.

Lise Gimpel paused in cleaning up the house to take a pull from a glass of schnapps. The place was an astonishing mess. It might have suffered a visit from an earthquake or a hurricane, not the Security Police. They'd torn the place apart, looking for evidence that Heinrich was a Jew. If she hadn't flushed the photographs, they would have found it, too.

Her brain felt as badly disordered as the house. They'd roared questions at her while they were throwing everything on the floor. Why had she married a Jew? How long had she known he was a Jew? Why was she such a filthy whore? Did she think it was more fun sucking a circumcised cock?

Maybe they'd figured that one would horrify her into spilling secrets. All it did was make her furious. "You stupid fucking bastards!" she'd screamed. "You've got him! You know goddamn well he's not circumcised!"

They hadn't arrested her. They'd even been a little more polite after that-not much, but a little. They hadn't got anything out of her, or she didn't think they had. And they'd been in a rotten mood when they finally quit searching the house, so she didn't think they'd come up with anything there, either.

Now…Now all she could do was pick up the pieces. They hadn't smashed things on purpose, anyhow. All they'd done was toss them every which way. Getting them back where they belonged would take time, but she could do it. What else did she have to do, with Heinrich and the girls gone? Work helped hold worry at bay-again, not much, but a little.

The telephone rang. Lise jumped."Scheisse," she said crisply. The last thing she wanted to do was talk to anybody right now. But she knew she had to. It might be important. It might-literally-be life and death. Making her way through drifts of things on the floor, she went to the phone and picked it up. "Bitte?"

"Lise?" It was Willi. "How are you? Is there any news?"

"News? Well, yes. They've turned the house inside out. They've taken the children. Other than that, everything's jolly."

"Gott im Himmel!" Willi burst out. In the background, Erika asked what was wrong. He relayed what Lise had just told him.

"The children?" Erika said. "Du lieber Gott!I didn't even think about the children!"

"That's terrible," Willi said to Lise. "Is there anything I can do?"

"I've got Heinrich a lawyer. I hope it helps," Lise answered. "It should. He's innocent, so there's no way they can prove he's a Jew." She assumed more people than Willi Dorsch were listening to her telephone calls. She wouldn't have admitted what Heinrich was even to Willi alone. With the Security Police surely tapping the line, she wouldn't admit anything to anybody.

"There you go," Willi said. "Keep your chin up, and everything will turn out all right." He sounded like a man whistling past a graveyard.

Lise said, "Thanks," anyhow. Willi meant well. That probably wouldn't do Heinrich any good, but it was there. She went on, "I'm going to go. They left the house a hell of a mess."

"Oh. All right. Take care of yourself. We're thinking about you." Willi hung up.

So did Lise.Thinking about me? Thinking what about me? she wondered.Thinking I may be a Jew myself? But that wasn't fair. Willi had sounded the way a friend ought to sound. And Erika seemed genuinely horrified when he told her the Security Police had grabbed the girls, too.

They're good friends if they call, thinking Heinrich's not a Jew. They'd be better friends if they thought he was a Jew and called anyway. Maybe they did think so. But Lise would be a fool to ask them, and they would be fools to tell her.

Shaking her head, she got back to work.

"You! Gimpel!" a blackshirted jailer roared, and Heinrich sprang to his feet and stiffened to attention as if he were back in elementary school. Back then, he would have worried about a paddling. Now two more men from the Security Police leveled assault rifles at him. The jailer unlocked his cell and swung the door open. "Come with us."

"Jawohl!" Heinrich said. Another grilling? Another tentative thumping? Or were they really going to get down to business this time?

"Hands behind your back," the jailer told him when he'd stepped out into the corridor. Numbly, he obeyed. The man cuffed them behind him, then gave him a shove. "Get moving."

Feet light with fear, he obeyed. He couldn't do anything about his flopping trousers now. They didn't seem to care-they were hauling him along. They took him by a different route this time. He didn't know if that was good or bad. His heart thuttered. One way or the other, he'd find out.

They brought him to a room divided in half by a thick glass wall. A grill let someone on his side talk with someone on the other side. And someone did wait on the other side: a tall man, almost as tall as Heinrich, with an impressive mane of gray hair. The stranger wore a sharp pinstripe suit and carried a crocodile-leather attache case with fittings that looked like real gold.

"Your mouthpiece." The jailer sounded disgusted. Neither he nor his gun-toting pals showed any sign of leaving the room. Whatever Heinrich said to the lawyer, he'd say in front of them.

He hardly cared. He shuffled to the grill. He had to stoop a little to put his mouth by it. He didn't care about that, either. "Who are you?" he asked. "Can you get me out of here? Did Lise hire you?"

"Your wife, you mean?Ja. My name's Klaus Menzel, and I don't have any idea whether I can spring you," answered the man on the other side of the grill. "I'll give it my best shot, though. All billable hours either way." He sounded cheerfully mercenary.

Somehow, that made Heinrich like him more, not less. He seemed less likely to be a Security Police plant, someone put in place to get Heinrich to spill his guts. Of course, if they'd wanted him to do that, they would have kept the guards out of the room.

"Do you know who falsely alleged you're a Jew?" Menzel asked. Again, the way he put things cheered Heinrich. He wasn't assuming his client was guilty. He wasn't acting as if he was assuming that, anyway.

Hearing him talk like that made Heinrich want to help him. Unfortunately, he couldn't. He tried to spread his hands. The cuffs wouldn't let him. He said, "I haven't the slightest idea. Will the Security Police tell you?"

Menzel shrugged. He had broad shoulders and a narrow waist, as if he were a retired soldier or-perhaps more likely-a football player who'd stayed in shape into his fifties. He said, "They're supposed to. Of course, they don't always do what they're supposed to." He raised his voice and called out to a blackshirt on Heinrich's side of the glass: "Isn't that right, Joachim?"

"Screw you, you damn fraud," answered one of the men with an assault rifle. "You had your way, the Reich 'd be ass-deep in kikes. Then they'd study law and squeeze you out of business. Serve you right, too."

He sounded more amused than angry. For that matter, so did the lawyer. How often had they harassed each other? A good many times, plainly. Heinrich asked, "When will you know if you can get me out?"

"I'm not sure," Menzel said with another shrug. "When they hear somebody might be a Jew, they grab first and ask questions later. Depends on what they turn up next. Depends on how much of an uproar they want to get their bowels into, too. I can promise you the moon, but I don't know if I can deliver."

That wasn't what Heinrich wanted to hear. He would have loved to be promised the moon, all wrapped up in a pretty pink ribbon. But, again, Klaus Menzel seemed to work in the realm of the possible. Heinrich said, "What's your best guess?"

"I'll find out as fast as I can. A few days, most likely," the lawyer answered.

"Is Lise all right? The girls?"

"Your wife is fine. She's mad as hops because they made a mess of your house when they searched it. I like her. She's good people, and she doesn't scare easy." Menzel hesitated. As soon as he did, Heinrich feared he knew what was coming next. And he was right: "They've got your kids. If you were a Jew, they'd be first-degree Mischlingen, and subject to the same sanctions." That was a bloodless, legalistic way to put it. What Menzel meant was,They'll kill them, too.

Heinrich groaned. "They can't!" But they could. They'd been doing it for seventy years. Why should they stop now? He'd had a surge of panic when he heard the blackshirts searched his house. Lise must have managed to dispose of the photos before they got there. Otherwise, Menzel wouldn't have been able to do anything at all for him, probably wouldn't even have been allowed to see him. He would have been dead by now, and so would his children.

"Try not to worry too much," the lawyer said. "If you come out, the kids come out, too."And if you don't, they don't. That hung in the air. But if Heinrich didn't come out, he'd die. He wouldn't be able to worry then, either.

Will Alicia hold up?He didn't have to fret about the other two, not for that. They didn't know what they were. But if Alicia broke, if they broke her…

"You're out of time, Gimpel," said one of the men from the Security Police. "Back to your cell. And as for you, you lousy shyster…" He sent Klaus Menzel an obscene gesture. Laughing, Menzel returned it.

They marched Heinrich out of the room with the glass partition.You're out of time, Gimpel. The words tolled like a funeral bell inside his mind. And it wouldn't be his funeral alone. They had the girls, too.

No matter how grim tomorrow looked, you had to get on with today. So Esther Stutzman told herself, over and over and over again. But when a friend and his children were in the hands of the Security Police-and when, if they hurt him long enough and badly enough, he might cry out her name-it wasn't easy.

She tried to carry on as if nothing were wrong. When she went in to Dr. Dambach's office, she said not a word about Heinrich Gimpel. Dambach already knew she knew the Kleins. If he found out she was friends with someone else suspected of being a Jew, he might start wondering about her. The best way to stay safe was not to let anybody wonder.

"Guten Morgen, Frau Stutzman," the pediatrician said when she came in. "I was just about to start making coffee."

Those were words to alarm anybody. "Why don't you let me take care of that?" Esther said quickly. "Then you can do something, uh, useful instead."

"Well, all right," Dambach said. "As long as you're here, I'll start reviewing medical journals. With so much being published these days, it gets harder and harder to stay up to date."

"I'm sure it must," Esther said. "Yes, you get on with that, and I'll bring you some nice coffee just as soon as it's made."

"Thank you very much," he said, and went back into his private office. Esther let out a sigh of relief: one small catastrophe averted, anyhow. If only the big ones were so easy to get around.

The whole morning seemed one threatened small catastrophe after another. One by one, Esther managed and mastered them. She felt as if she were dancing between the raindrops without getting wet. Dr. Dambach had no idea most of them even turned up. Keeping him from needing to know about such things was part of her job.

When Irma Ritter came into the office at lunch, Esther did have to spend an extra five or ten minutes explaining some of the things that had gone on. "You had yourself a busy time, didn't you?" Irma said when she was through.

"One of those days," Esther answered. She made her escape and went down to the bus stop. She took a different bus from the usual; instead of going straight home, she rode up to the Kurfurstendamm to shop. Walther's birthday was coming up, and so was their anniversary.

She'd just got off the bus when a noisy parade came down the middle of Berlin's main shopping boulevard. At first, seeing the swastika placards some of the men on foot were carrying, she thought it was only another traffic-snarling Nazi procession. Then she realized she was wrong. It was a Nazi procession of sorts, but not one like any she'd ever seen. Along with the swastikas, the paraders carried placards with slogans like THROW THE RASCALS OUT! and REFORM CANDIDATES FOR THE REICHSTAG! and DOWN WITH THE PARTYBONZEN!

Men and women on the street stared. Everyone seemed as astonished as Esther was that the authorities would allow such a parade. But then people started to cheer, and to wave at the reform candidates. The politicians-many of whom were fairly prominent Party men themselves-waved back.

Esther spotted Rolf Stolle marching at the rear of the parade, and she began to understand. The Gauleiter 's bodyguards were gray-uniformed Berlin policemen, not the usual blackshirts. He carried a bullhorn. With his big, booming voice, he hardly seemed to need it.

"the Fuhrer says you can be free!" he shouted. "That's good, because you've taken too many boots in the face for too long. If you don't believe me, ask Lothar Prutzmann! the Fuhrer says youcan be free, yes. But I say youought to be free! Do you see the difference?"

Raucous cheers said the crowd on the Kurfurstendamm sidewalks did. People were less restrained now than they had been while Kurt Haldweim was Fuhrer. They'd begun to see that they could say some of the things that had been on their minds for years without worrying that the Security Police would bundle them into a car and haul them off to prison or to a camp.

But they aren't Jews,Esther thought, wondering how Heinrich was holding up-and whether he was still holding out. She wondered about Alicia, too. What would they do to a child? No one had come to bundle her into a car. That was all she knew. In an important way, that was all she needed to know.

"Things will look different once we elect a real Reichstag!" Rolf Stolle roared. "Too many have got away with too much for too long. We're going to show the world where the bodies are buried-and we all know there are lots of them."

More cheers. More shouts. People around Esther waved their fists in the air. She stared at Stolle. He couldn't be talking about Jews…could he? She grimaced. Odds were against it. Plenty of Germans-and others-had gone missing during the Third Reich. Who would get excited about millions of Jews now? Odds were, no one. After the First World War, who'd got excited about all the Armenians the Turks did in? Nobody. Hitler had seen as much, and noted it in Mein Kampf. And he'd been dead right. Yes, that was the word.

"Some people-some people with fancy jobs and even fancier uniforms-are going to have a lot of explaining to do," Stolle declared. "Will they be able to do it? Good question. Damn good question. We'll find out."

Then he broke out of the parade and away from his bodyguards and plunged into the crowd. Alarm on their faces, the Berlin cops rushed after the Gauleiter. He might have forgotten they existed. He'd spotted a tall, pretty blond woman on the sidewalk. She squeaked in surprise as he squeezed her, kissed her on both cheeks and then on the mouth, and very likely took a few other liberties Esther couldn't see.

"There!" he said, grinning enormously. "You're going to vote for your good old Uncle Rolf, aren't you, darling?" For good measure, he kissed her again.

"Uh,ja, " she stammered, sounding as dazed as a hurricane survivor. Men whooped. Women laughed. Rolf Stolle not only had a reputation, he reveled in it.

He elbowed his way back through the crowd and into the procession down the Kurfurstendamm once more. "Weare the Volk!" he roared through the bullhorn. "This is a Volkisch state. Everybody says that, but nobody says what it means. It means the state is ours, that's what. Weare the Volk!"

"We are the Volk!" People picked up the rallying cry. "Weare the Volk!We are the Volk!"

When Heinz Buckliger started calling for reform, had he expectedthis? As Esther ducked into a haberdasher's, she shook her head. She couldn't believe it. But, whether the Fuhrer had expected this or not, this was what he had. And what would he do about it?

Now that Lise had the house straight again, she went through the motions of everyday life. With Heinrich and the girls gone, all she could do was go through the motions. Nothing she did seemed to mean anything. How could it, without the people who gave it meaning?

She fixed food for herself and ate it as if she were fueling a machine that needed to keep going. She had trouble figuring outwhy it needed to keep going: more in case her husband and daughters came back than for any independent reason.

Mechanically, she washed her few dishes. Once that was done, she kept having to find a way to get through the rest of the evening till it was time to try to sleep. She didn't want to watch the news. Horst Witzleben's half-hour suddenly seemed full of nothing but bright, shining lies. People all over the Germanic Empire were demanding their freedom or exulting in new freedom won. Up until a few days before, Lise had exulted with them. Now, with Heinrich in jail and the children stolen, other people's celebrations seemed a grim mockery.

She cleaned things that didn't need cleaning and read a novel where she knew she was missing one word in three. Every hour or two, she would look up at the clock on the mantel and discover another ten minutes had gone by. Most of her wished she were in captivity with the rest of her family. Staying free didn't make her feel safe-only guilty.

When the phone rang, she put down the novel without a trace of regret. It wasn't as if she were paying attention to it anyhow. Maybe it was her sister; Kathe owed her a call. Even if the line was bugged, the two of them could talk pretty openly. No snoop could penetrate their pauses and misdirections.

"Bitte?" Lise said.

"Guten Abend,Lise." It wasn't Kathe: it was a man. Lise just had time to shift gears and recognize Willi Dorsch's voice before he said, "I'm so sorry."

"Oh, my God!" Lise blurted. Those words, at this time, were the last thing, the very last thing, she wanted to hear. "What do you know, Willi? What have you heard? Tell me right this second, before I reach down the telephone line and pull it out of you with both hands!"

By what felt like a miracle, he understood her right away and didn't try to joke around. "Nothing about Heinrich-nothing, I swear," he said quickly. "But Erika's in the hospital. They think she'll be all right, but she's there."

"Wait," Lise said. Too many things were happening too fast-much too fast for her to follow. "If Erika's in the hospital, I'm the one who's supposed to be sorry, not you."

"I'm not so sure about that." Willi sounded most unhappy. He also sounded-embarrassed?

"Willi, please take this one step at a time. You're way,way ahead of me," Lise said. "First tell me why Erika's in the hospital."

"Well, she took too many pills. Took them on purpose."

"Why on earth would she do that?" Lise asked in honest amazement. "Not because you've been fooling around on her, for heaven's sake. That wouldn't do it. She'd get even instead."

A considerable silence followed. Mostly to himself, Willi muttered, "I might have known you'd know about that." Another silence, this one punctuated by a sigh. He gathered himself and went on: "You're not wrong. She did try to get even, only it didn't work out the way she wanted. That's…some of why she took the pills."

"You'd better tell me the rest of this." Lise thought she knew where he was going, but she wasn't sure, and she didn't want to guess, not here. Too much rode on whether she was right or wrong.

"Well…" Yet another long pause. "It seems she was trying to get even with me with, uh, with Heinrich, of all people."

Lise almost laughed at how surprised he sounded. He'd never dreamt of Heinrich as a rival. She thought her husband was pretty hot stuff. Why wouldn't another woman? But that was a question for a different time. All she said now was, "Go on."

"You know about that, too," Willi said in dismay. Lise didn't deny it. "Why doesn't anybody tell me these things?" he wondered aloud.

"Never mind that now," Lise said, as if there were reasons galore but she had no time to go into them. "Just get on with it, please."

"I guess Heinrich told her no?" Even though Willi put an audible question mark at the end of the sentence, he didn't really sound as if he doubted it. With a sigh, he continued, "Erika…doesn't like people telling her no. And so…and so she…God damn it, Lise, I'mso sorry." Willi's usually cheerful voice held something not far from a sob.

"She was the one who accused Heinrich of being a Jew?" Lise couldn't hear anything at all in her own voice. The words might have come from the throat of some machine. She'd been right, sure enough.

"I'm afraid she was," Willi answered miserably. "He said something about acting like Solomon and cutting a doll in half, and Solomon was King of the Jews, and that put the idea in her mind, I suppose. But she never thought about the children. When she found out about them, that was when she…did what she did."

"Wonderful." Lise's voice stayed flat, now choking back a scream. Erika hadn't cared if she killed Heinrich-hell, she'd wanted him dead. But she drew the line at the girls.How generous of her.

"When she's better, she'll go back to the Security Police and tell them it was all a lie. I swear she will," Willi said. "She wants to make things right if she can."

"Wonderful," Lise repeated, as flatly as before.

"It'll be all right. It really will." Willi was all but babbling. His laugh was nervous, but it was a laugh. "I know Heinrich's not a Jew-believe me, I know; don't get me wrong-but the way things are nowadays, Buckliger might not even care if he was." He laughed again.

Don't you have any sense in your head? Don't you know they're bound to be tapping my phone?Lise couldn't say that, because, of course, theywere listening. Before she could say anything, someone knocked on the front door. "I've got to go," she told Willi, and hung up in a hurry. It didn't sound like the knock the Security Police used. It didn't declare,We'll kick the door open if you don't let us in right this minute. But you never could tell.

Guts knotting, Lise turned the knob and swung the door on its hinges. It wasn't the Security Police. It was Adela Handrick, Emma's mother, a rather squat blond woman who wore expensive clothes in loud colors that didn't suit her sallow skin.

Up till now, the neighbors had stayed away from the Gimpel house. The plague might have struck here. "Hello," Lise said hesitantly. "Uh-won't you come in?"

Frau Handrick shook her head. Lise got a whiff of some fancy cologne. "No, that's all right," the other woman answered. She sounded nervous, too, and licked her carefully reddened lips. "I just wanted to tell you that Stefan and I"-Stefan was her husband-"hope everything goes…as well as it can for you. Emma says she wants to see Alicia back in school, too."

Tears stung Lise's eyes. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you very much."

Seeming to take courage, Adela Handrick said, "You're all good people. Everybody in the neighborhood knows it. This is all nothing but a bunch of garbage. But"-an expressive shrug-"what can you do? You have to be careful. Maybe things will be better after the elections. But maybe they won't, too."

Even suggesting that they might be better was a wonder. Lise said, "All I want is for Heinrich and the girls to come home."

"What else?" Frau Handrick said. "Even if you were Jews, you'd probably want the same thing. Who could blame you?" She dipped her head. "Take care of yourself." Without another word, she started up the street toward her own house.

Lise stared after her. Willi'd said the one thing. Now she'd said the other. Maybe a lot of people paid as little attention to what they got taught in school about hating Jews as they did about geometry. But how could you afford to find out?

Alicia Gimpel had always been good at remembering her lessons. That helped her now. The Security Police were trying to get her to admit she knew her father was a Jew. They didn't have a real interrogation room at the foundlings' home. They had to make do with an office. A desk lamp glaring into her eyes was almost as bad as some of the fancy lights they would have had back at their own headquarters.

"You must have known!" one of them shouted. He slammed his fist down on the desk. Alicia jumped. So did the gooseneck lamp. He had to grab it to keep it from falling over. "How could you not know your own father is a stinking Jew?"

"He is not!" Alicia said shrilly. "That's a lie, and you know it!" She took her cue from her little sisters. They thought they were telling the truth, which gave them an edge on her. But she was acting for her life. And, while some people might not have learned their lessons, she knew what her teachers had drilled into her. "Jews are bloodsucking tyrants. They cheat people at business. They crawl around their betters with vilest flattery. They always try to steal credit where they don't deserve it. That's what Mein Kampf says! Does Daddy do any of those things? You know he doesn't!"

"Jesus!" said a blackshirt behind Alicia. "She's even worse than the other two brats. Maybe that son of a bitch really isn't a goddamn sheeny."

"Why'd they grab him, then?" asked the one at the desk. "If they grab you, you bet your ass you deserve it." He glowered at Alicia. He had a red, beefy face, with black-heads on his nose and between his eyebrows. His teeth were yellow; his breath stank of old cigars. "If you don't tell us the truth, you'll be sorry."

"Iam telling the truth," Alicia lied. "Why don't you believe me? All I want to do is go home." She sure told the truth there. She wanted to cry, but held back her tears. When she did cry, it felt as if the Security Police had won something from her.

The blackshirts hadn't slapped her or hit her or done anything worse than that. As far as she knew, they hadn't hurt her sisters, either. Maybe even the Security Police didn't like the idea of torturing little girls. Alicia had her doubts about that. If you joined the Security Police, you had to want to hurt people, didn't you? More likely, they weren't sure enough about Daddy to have too much of that kind of fun.

They won't find anything out from me,Alicia vowed.And they really won't find anything out from Francesca and Roxane.

Scowling, the blackshirt who smelled like cigar butts said, "What do you know about"-he looked down at some notes on the desk-"Erika Dorsch?"

"Frau Dorsch?" Alicia said in surprise-this was a new tack. "The Dorsches are Daddy and Mommy's friends, that's all." This fellow couldn't think she was a Jew…could he?

With a leer, the man from the Security Police asked, "Is this Dorsch galreal good friends with your old man?" The other blackshirts laughed.

Most of that went over Alicia's head. "I don't know," she answered. "They all play bridge together and they talk till it's late."

"Bridge?" The blackshirt threw back his head and snorted in contempt. He needed to blow his nose. Alicia fought against revulsion. The man asked, "Whatother games do they play?" His pals laughed again.

Still out of her depth, Alicia only shrugged. "I don't know about any other games. I don't know what you're talking about."

"Forget it, Hans," said one of the fellows behind Alicia. "If this Gimpel bastard is fooling around with her, the kid doesn't know about it."

That was plain enough for Alicia to understand. She gasped at the very idea. "Daddy wouldn't do any such thing!" she exclaimed. "Not ever!"

All the blackshirts laughed at that. "No, eh?" said the one who was questioning her. "I sure as hell would. She's a piece and a half." He looked past her to his buddies. "You guys seen a picture of this broad? She's a blonde, good looking, built…" His hands described an hourglass in the air. "Hell, I'd crawl through a thousand kilometers of broken glass just to let her piss on my toothbrush."

"Ewww!" Alicia's voice rose to a thin squeak. "That's disgusting!" The men from the Security Police thought her horror was funnier than their friend's joke.

The interrogator thought revolting her was pretty funny, too. He kept on asking her questions after that, but he didn't seem so mean and threatening any more. It wasn't much worse than getting grilled by Herr Kessler.He taught me all kinds of things-including some he probably didn't intend to, she thought.

Even so, she knew she'd never be able to look at Frau Dorsch the same way again.

Finally, the man from the Security Police turned off the desk lamp. "Well, kid, that's enough of that for a while," he said in oddly intimate tones, as if what they'd been doing together had somehow made them friends. Maybe he thought it had. He stepped back, straightened up, and stretched. Trying to get her to say things that would kill her father-and, incidentally, herself-was all in a day's work for him. "Go on, Ulf. Take her back with the rest of the snotnoses."

You should talk,Alicia thought. They'd made her miss supper. This wasn't the first time that had happened. She knew the staff at the foundlings' home wouldn't give her anything till breakfast. If you weren't there when they dished out a meal, that was your tough luck. They weren't actively cruel, but they had no give whatever in them.

She lay down on her cot. Even if the blackshirts hadn't beaten her, she felt trampled and miserable. For Hans and Ulf and the others, this was all just a game, a game they'd played hundreds or thousands of times before. Alicia's life was on the line, and her father's, and her sisters', and she knew it. And she didn't see how she could win.

Paula came into their room. In a practically inaudible whisper, she said, "Here. When I saw they weren't going to let you go, I swiped these for you." Like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a top hat, she produced two hard rolls from under her dress and tossed them to Alicia.

Alicia blinked. "If they caught you, you'd get in big trouble."

"Well, then, you'd better destroy the evidence, eh?" Paula wasn't especially smart, not in the way that got you good grades at school. Alicia could tell. But the other girl had a feel for whatneeded doing, one that Alicia couldn't begin to match. She took Paula's advice. The rolls quickly disappeared. They tasted like sawdust. Empty as Alicia was, she didn't care. "Better?" Paula asked when she was done.

"Ja,"Alicia said. "Thank you!"

"For what?" Paula waved it away. "Those shitheads are giving you a hard time. Anybody can see that. If they were giving a vulture a hard time, I'd try and get him some dead, smelly meat."

Springs squeaked as Alicia shifted on the cot. One of them poked at her, too, so she shifted again. She stuck her head out and flapped her arms as if she were a vulture. Paula thought that was so funny, she buried her face in her pillow to muffle her laughter. Alicia watched her out of the corner of her eye. The other girl acted like somebody who hated the Reich and the Nazis and everything they stood for. But if it was an act and Alicia fell for it, she'd ruin herself and her whole family. And so she wouldn't fall for it.

If Paula really did hate the Reich and the Nazis…then she did, that was all. Alicia couldn't afford to let on that she did, too, except for arresting her when they had no business to. And that, maybe, was the hardest, the saddest, thing of all.

Heinrich Gimpel sat in his cell, waiting for whatever happened next. That was all he could do. Boredom mixed with occasional terror-that was what his life in prison had been. He could see how the blend was in and of itself part of what broke prisoners down. As he sat on the cot, he could practically feel his mind slowing down, slowing down, slowing…

And he was better equipped than most to fight boredom. He had a fine memory. He could call up books and plays and films in his mind, trying to squeeze out every last detail. He could set up complicated accounting problems and solve them in his head instead of with a calculator. He could remember the last time he'd made love with Lise, and the time before that, and the quickie they'd sneaked in, and…

He could worry. He spent a lot of time worrying. That was part of leaving him here by himself, too. He knew as much, and tried to fight against it. There, he didn't have much luck.

He was brooding and wishing he weren't when guards clumped up the hallway toward his cell. One opened the door while two others pointed assault rifles at him. He couldn't understand why they thought he was so dangerous. Under different circumstances, it might have been flattering.

"Come on, you," growled the guard with the key. "Your mouthpiece is waiting."

As Heinrich rose, he got a whiff of himself. His nostrils curled. He'd done his best to stay clean, but his best wasn't very good. And he was still wearing the uniform in which he'd been arrested. It was ranker than he was.

Down the hall he went, holding up his trousers with one hand. At least they hadn't cuffed him this time. Never mind the assault rifles at his back. He couldn't very well make a break when his pants would fall down if he tried. Without laces, his shoes flopped on his feet, too.

Klaus Menzel stood waiting in the room with the glass partition. The lawyer had on another suit that would have cost Heinrich a month's pay. He stepped up to the grill and said, "I have some good news and some bad news for you. Which do you want first?"

"Give me the good news," Heinrich said at once. "I haven't heard any in so long…"

"All right. Here it is." Menzel told him how the charges against him had come from Erika Dorsch, and how she'd tried to kill herself after she found out she'd got the girls seized along with Heinrich. Menzel added, "You should have just screwed the broad, Gimpel. No matter what your wife did to you afterwards, you wouldn't've landed in this kind of shit. And you'd've had the roll in the hay to remember."

"Heh," Heinrich said in a hollow voice. That had occurred to him, too. He went on, "You say Erika's going to be all right, and that's she's withdrawn these stupid charges." He needed to go on repeating that they were stupid, or the blackshirts were liable to think he believed them. "That's all wonderful! They have to let me out now, don't they?"

Gloomily, Klaus Menzel shook his head. "They don'thave to do a goddamn thing, and you ought to know it by this time. Trouble is, they don't believe this Dorsch item. They figure she's got the hots for you, so she's lying to protect you."

"That's crazy!" Heinrich yelped.

"Tell me about it," Menzel said. "But the way things are now, they aren't about to let you go right this minute. They don't want to look soft." He wrinkled up his nose, as if at a bad smell.

"Is Prutzmann-?" Heinrich began.

"I don't know anything about politics," his lawyer broke in. "If you're smart, you don't, either." That was undoubtedly good advice. With the guards in the room, with microphones bound to be picking up every word, saying anything bad-or anything at all-about the Reichsfuhrer — SS couldn't be smart.

"Well, what are you doing about everything?" Heinrich demanded. That was a question he could legitimately ask, even here.

"Trying to get them to look at what's right in front of their noses," Menzel answered. "Maybe they will, maybe they won't. They haven't given you a noodle yet, anyhow. That's something, believe me. I don't remember the last time they arrested somebody here they thought was a fullblood, not just some kind of Mischling. Whoever the last bastard was, I bet he didn't come close to lasting as long as you have. So keep your pecker up, and we'll see what happens."

As soon as Menzel turned away from the grill, the Security Police jailers marched Heinrich back to his cell. There he sat, by the world forgot though he couldn't forget the world. They didn't take him out and shoot him or send him to a camp. That was his only consolation. No, he had one other: as long as they didn't do anything to him, they wouldn't do anything to the girls, either.

Three days later, a tall, blond man in the uniform of a Security Police major came to his cell along with the warder. The officer signed some papers on a clipboard and gave them to the warder, who read them, nodded, and opened the door. "He's all yours," he said.

"Good," the officer answered briskly. He pointed a leather-gloved finger at Heinrich. "You're Gimpel?" Heinrich nodded. The major gestured peremptorily. "Come with me."

Gulping, Heinrich came. He'd been here long enough to have learned to fear changes in routine. They were rarely changes for the better. He shuffled around, shoes loose on his feet, one hand holding up his pants. Behind him, the cell door clanged.

His fear grew when the officer took him down unfamiliar corridors. Would they give him the noodle right here, when he least expected it? He braced himself, not that that would do him any good. They left the cells and went into the prison's office block. The blackshirt opened a door. "In here."

The room was small and bare. The walls were whitewashed brick, the floor cheap linoleum. A bare bulb burned in a ceiling fixture. On a rickety wooden table lay Heinrich's greatcoat, his belt and shoelaces, his wallet, his keys, his comb, even his pocket change-the personal effects he'd had when he was arrested.

"Fix yourself up," the Security Police major said. Heinrich obeyed, though his hands shook so much, he had trouble putting the laces in his shoes. Would they shoot him "while attempting escape"? When he was dressed, the major took him to a bathroom across the hall. A scissors and a razor sat on the sink.

"Shave." He did, trimming his beard with the scissors before attacking it with the blade. Shaving in cold water without soap was unpleasant, but he managed. The major nodded. "You'll do."

Heinrich was surprised when the blackshirt, after signing more papers, led him out of the prison. He was astonished when the man took him to a bus stop two blocks away, so astonished that he blurted, "What's going on?"

"You're free," the major said. "Charges quashed. Go home. This bus will take you right to South Station."

"My God," Heinrich whispered. "Menzel came through?" A few meters away, a wren scuttling through a flowerbed chirped shrilly. It was the sweetest music he'd ever heard.

"Your lawyer?" The Security Police officer threw back his head and laughed. "He thinks he did, anyhow." A bus came up. The wren flew away. The major winked at Heinrich.Did I really see that? he wondered. Casually, the fellow said, "You find us in the oddest places." The bus door opened. The major pushed Heinrich towards it.Us? He couldn't mean- He never got the chance to ask. The major had turned away, and the bus driver waited impatiently. Heinrich fed his card into the fare slot. The light flashed green. The bus rolled away.