She looked Franz Oppenhoff in the eye. "And that,Herr Doktor Professor, about sums it up."
He'd wanted her to make a hash of it. She knew that. She'd had to suffer through a string of indignities no professor who pissed standing up would have had to endure. This was only the latest, and far from the worst. Now she wanted to see whether Oppenhoff would have the gall to claim she hadn't made a proper presentation. If he did, she intended to scorch him.
He scratched at the edge of his side-whiskers, coughed once or twice, and looked down at the papers in front of him. Still looking down at them, he mumbled, "I must thank you for your clear, concise report." People more than half a dozen seats from him undoubtedly didn't hear a word.
"Danke schon,Professor Oppenhoff. I'm glad you liked it," Susanna said loudly. She would get the message across, even if the department chairman didn't feel like doing it.
The meeting ground on. Oppenhoff didn't call on her any more. He did keep glancing over to her every so often. She smiled back sweetly, wishing she could display a shark's teeth instead of her own.
Heinrich Gimpel was finishing up a bowl of rather nasty cabbage stew in the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht canteen when a uniformed guard coming off his shift walked in and said, "Something juicy's going on out in the Adolf Hitler Platz."
"What now?" somebody asked him. "More damned Dutchmen yelling, 'Freedom!'? They probably won't even bother arresting them these days."
But the guard shook his head. "No, it's bigger than any of that piddling crap. They've got a podium and televisor cameras and all kinds of stuff."
That sounded interesting. Heinrich got up, threw out his trash, and put his tray on a moving belt that took it back to the dishwashers. By the clock, he should have gone straight to his desk. He decided to ignore the clock for once. Willi and Ilse had taken plenty of long lunches without ending the world. He figured he could get away with one, especially since he was only going out onto the square in front of headquarters.
As soon as he walked out of the building, he saw the guard was right. In fact, Adolf Hitler Platz held not one commotion but two. Proud banners flying ahead of it, an SS band full of tubas and thumping drums strutted through the square playing marches as loud as they could. If they weren't trying to drown out the man on the podium…
It was a bright spring day. It wasn't very warm-it couldn't have been above ten Celsius-but the sun shone down brightly. It gleamed off the speaker's head, which wasn't just bald but shaven. As soon as Heinrich recognized Rolf Stolle, he knew exactly why that band was blaring away.
He hurried down the steps and across the paving toward the podium from which the Gauleiter of Berlin was addressing a good-sized crowd. Stolle had a microphone. Even so, he was barely a match for the booming band.
He not only knew it, he took advantage of it, saying, "You see how it is,Volk of the Reich? Some of the powers that be don't want you to hear me. They don't want me reminding you that we need to go forward, not sit around with our thumbs up our…" He stopped and grinned. "Well, you know what I mean. And I'll tell you something else I mean, too. These are the people in charge of protecting the Fuhrer. He wants reform. He doesn't want enough of it. He doesn't want it quick enough. But he wants it. They don't. I've told Heinz and told him, 'Don't let these people get behind you so they can stab you in the back,' but he doesn't want to listen."
Stolle stuck out his chin and thrust his fist forward. The pose made him look like Mussolini. "Heinz Buckliger is a good man. Don't get me wrong," he said. "A good man, yes. But a little too trusting."
Whatever he said next, the thundering SS musicians drowned it out. Instead of getting angry about that, he laughed. He even sang a few bars of the march they were playing. People laughed and clapped their hands. Stolle grinned. He struck another pose, this time a silly one. When Heinrich thought of him as a clown, he hadn't been so far wrong. An appreciative audience made Stolle come alive.
The band moved a little farther away from the podium. The Gauleiter moved a little closer to the microphone. "If those noisy SS bastards will just go home, I'll get on with my speech," he said.
A man in the crowd shouted, "SS go home!" He shouted it again. Then three or four more people took up the call. Before long, everybody who'd come to Adolf Hitler Platz to hear Rolf Stolle was yelling, "SS go home!" The cry echoed from the long front wall of the Fuhrer 's palace. Could Heinz Buckliger hear it in there? If he could, what did he think?
Heinrich wondered, but not for long. He was caught up in the thrill of shouting, "SS go home!" He never would have had the nerve to be first to yell such a thing. In the middle of thousands of others, his voice was only one, indistinguishable from the rest.They'll have a hell of a time arresting all of us, he thought, and yelled louder than ever. "SS go home! SS go home!SS go home! "
The chant swelled and swelled. Looking at the excited faces and sparkling eyes of the men and women all around him, Heinrich realized he wasn't the only one who'd wanted to say that for years. How many Germans did? How many would, if they got the chance? He smelled the acrid sweat of fear, but people kept shouting.
Rolf Stolle leaned toward the microphone again. "SS go home!" he called, leading the chorus. "SS go home!"
Heinrich watched the band. Would the musicians deign to take any notice of the people clamoring for them to leave? If they did, wasn't that a sign of weakness? If they didn't, how long before hotheads started throwing rocks and bottles and whatever else they could get their hands on at them? And what would the SS men do then? And what would the crowd-the mob?-do in reply?
Maybe those same questions were going through the band leader's head. Maybe he didn't like the answers that occurred to him, either. As if continuing a regular performance-which this was anything but-he led the musicians to the edge of the enormous square. They kept on playing, but they no longer interfered with Rolf Stolle's speech.
As the crowd roared in triumph, Stolle shouted, "Do you see,Volk of the Reich? Do you? Without you, they're nothing. And they aren't with you, are they?"
"No!" That was a great, pain-filled howl. Again, Heinrich yelled as loud as anyone. Had schnapps ever left him this giddy? He didn't think so.
"I was going to talk for a while longer, friends, but you just made my speech for me," the Gauleiter of Berlin boomed. The crowd cheered. Rolf Stolle went on, "And do you know what else? By this time tomorrow, the whole Reich will know what you've done!"
Ecstatic cheers drowned out the now-distant SS band. Heinrich joined them, but hesitantly. He thought Stolle was likely right. He wasn't so sure that delighted him. If this footage showed up on Horst Witzleben's newscast, would gimlet-eyed SS technicians pore over it, trying to identify every single person-every single subversive person-in the crowd? Could they identifyhim?
Most of the time, things like that would have left him scared to death. Today, he felt too much exultation, too much exaltation, to care very much. Germans-Germans!-had just told the SS (even if it was only a marching band) where to head in. He'd joined them. The SS (even if it was only a marching band) had retreated. And nobody had got shot.
If that all wasn't a reason to make a man feel three meters tall, Heinrich couldn't imagine what would be.
Something was going on. Lise Gimpel could tell as much by the way Heinrich acted when he came home from work. He had almost a mad scientist's gleam in his eye, an air of excitement, he didn't even try to hide. He wouldn't tell her what it was all about, though. That made her want to smack him.