"Who?" Lise had heard no more of him than she had of the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich. His name hardly even sounded German.
"-who has previously served the state as High Commissioner for Ostland Affairs." He'd been in charge of slaughtering Slavs, in other words. And now they were bringing his talents to the Reich itself? Lise shivered. The difference between bad and worse was much bigger than the difference between good and better. Much, much bigger.
CEILING SPEAKERS IN OBERKOMMANDO DER WEHRMACHT headquarters carried the announcement of Heinz Buckliger's incapacity moments after Heinrich and Willi sat down at their desks. "Decisive measures will be taken to stop the spreading of subversive rumors, actions that threaten the disruption of law and order and the creation of tension, and disobedience to the authorities responsible for implementing the state of emergency. Control will be established over all radio and televisor stations. Now serving as interim Fuhrer of the Reich and of the Germanic Empire is Odilo Globocnik, who has previously served the state as High Commissioner for Ostland Affairs." After the announcement, "
Deutschland uber Alles" and the "Horst Wessel Song" rang out again.
Heinrich looked at Willi. Willi looked back at Heinrich. "It's an SSPutsch!" Heinrich said.
Willi nodded. "It sure as hell is," he agreed. And then he said, "Odilo fucking Globocnik?" in tones of absolute disbelief.
"Be careful, Willi!" Ilse exclaimed. "If you talk like that, who knows what kind of trouble you'll end up in?"
In times like these, that might have been excellent advice. But Willi only shook his head. "Odilo fucking Globocnik?" he repeated, even more amazed and disgusted than before.
Over the patriotic music blaring out of the intercom, Heinrich said, "He's Prutzmann's puppet. He can't be anything else."
"Well, I should hope not," Willi said. "He's certainly nothing by himself. Didn't he get in trouble for driving drunk a while ago?"
"Beats me," Heinrich said. "I don't remember hearing that, but you could be right."
"I think so, but I'm not sure," Willi said. "Who the hell pays attention to the Odilo Globocniks of the world?"
Running feet in the corridor. Before Heinrich could respond to his friend's bon mot, someone-a soldier-stuck his head in the room and called, "Globocnik's on the televisor! They've got it on in the canteen!" The man didn't wait, but thudded down the hall in his jackboots and repeated his message for the next big office.
"Come on!" Half a dozen people said the same thing at the same time. Wheels squeaked as analysts pushed swivel chairs back from desks. A few stolid people went right on working. The rest, Heinrich and Willi among them, swarmed out of the room and toward the canteen.
So many men-and a few women-were going that way, something not far from a rugby scrum broke out in the corridor. Heinrich took an elbow or two and gave out a couple of his own. He squeezed into the canteen just in time to hear somebody yell, "Shut up!"-which made the clamor from the people already crowding the room drop a little.
Because Heinrich was ten or twelve centimeters taller than most people, he got a good look at the televisor screen even though he couldn't get close to it. Odilo Globocnik wasn't in the Fuhrer 's office in the palace across the square from Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters, or in the even more magnificent study in the Reichskanzellerei. He spoke from a studio that could have been anywhere.
And Globocnik himself was as unimpressive as his surroundings. He was in his fifties, and had the face of a street bruiser who'd gone to fat. His eyes and his short nose were both red-streaked. Heinrich would have bet that Willi was right and he did drink, probably a lot. He'd jammed his uniform cap down low on his forehead, perhaps to keep the bright studio lights out of those watery eyes.
He was reading from a text on a lectern in front of him, very obviously and not very well. "We will, uh, restore law and order. We will check anti-Party tendencies, at home and abroad. We will stamp out nationalist, uh, adventurism." His voice was a gravelly croak. His big, soft jowls wobbled as he spoke.
When he reached up to turn a page on his speech, his plump, beringed hand shook. Was he stumbling over the speech because he was a stupid lout or because he'd had a snootful before he got in front of the camera-or maybe both?
How much did any of that matter, though? In the background, out of focus and only half visible but instantly recognizable all the same, sat Lothar Prutzmann. The Reichsfuhrer- SS might choose to rule through a puppet, but he was bound to be the power behind the Putsch. And what could anybody else do about it?
Nothing,was the only answer that occurred to Heinrich, who'd just got out of the clutches of the Security Police. But then someone in the crowded canteen said, "This is the national channel. What's on the Berlin channel?"
The buzz that rose from that made it hard to hear what Odilo Globocnik was saying-not that missing his speech meant missing much. "Will Stolle let them get away with this?" somebody asked.
"Can Stolle do anything to stop it?" somebody else came back.
"If he can't, nobody can." Two people said that.
AWehrmacht colonel, no less, turned the dial on the televisor set. On the Berlin channel, a frightened-looking man sat on what looked like a quiz-show set. He was saying, "-not know how long you will be able to hear me,meine Damen und Herren. Armed men claiming to be from the Security Police have come to this studio. Our guards refusing to let them in, they opened fire. There have been casualties on both sides. We have asked for help from the Berlin city police, but we do not know if it will come or if it will be enough. We-"
The Wehrmacht colonel's voice rang out: "Sauer!"
"Ja, Herr Oberst?"someone-presumably Sauer-said.
"Get two companies of men to that studio on the double. They are to hold it at all costs. They will be reinforced if necessary. Do you understand me?"
"Jawohl, Herr Oberst!"Sauer started shoving his way out of the canteen. "Let me through!" The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses.
A telephone rang behind the man on the set. He didn't look like an announcer. He looked like a director suddenly in front of the camera instead of behind it. When the bell sounded, he jumped. He grabbed the phone, listened, said,"Ja," a couple of times, and hung up. He started talking even before he turned back toward his audience: "Meine Damen und Herren,that was Rolf Stolle, the Gauleiter of Berlin. He calls the arrest-that is what he terms it, the arrest-of the Fuhrer illegal, and says Globocnik and Prutzmann and the forces of darkness-so he calls them-fear elections and the exposure of the truth and-"
He disappeared. There was Rolf Stolle himself, his shaved head gleaming as he glared out of the televisor set. "Am I on?" he rasped, and then, "Volkof the Reich, anyone who can hear me, listen and listen good. This is an SSPutsch, nothing else but. If you stand up against it, it will come to pieces right in front of your noses. If they don't shoot me, I'll kick 'em right in the teeth. Don't let the bastards pull the wool over your eyes, the way they've been doing for years. They-"
When his angry face vanished from the screen, everyone in the canteen groaned. But the feed didn't turn into predigested pap or a smiling SS announcer explaining that everything was fine. It went back to that harried-looking man in the Berlin station's studio. He said, "We've lost our transmission from the Gauleiter 's residence. I don't know whether it has just been cut off or they are under attack there. I-" The phone behind him rang again. He jumped again, too, and snatched the handset off the cradle. When he hung up this time, he looked relieved. "That was Rolf Stolle. He is still free. He-"