“Deutschland über Alles” rang out again. The “Horst Wessel Lied” didn’t. That told Theo the Salvation Committee was running the radio station, anyhow.
More Bach poured out of the radio set. It was good, calm, peaceful, churchgoing music, music that advertised a good, calm, peaceful, churchgoing Germany to the listening world. Theo hoped the listening world was paying attention. He also hoped the Salvation Committee could get away with the coup-and that Guderian hadn’t been lying through his teeth when he talked about the Committee’s program.
And he hoped Germany itself and the German armed forces were feeling good and calm and peaceful, whether churchgoing or not. Hitler and the Nazis had been running the country for more than eleven years. They’d had plenty of time to plant their doctrines in people’s heads, plenty of time for those doctrines to flower and fruit.
Off in the distance, a Schmeisser opened up. An MG-42 answered it. Yes, not everyone would be thrilled to see the Führer overthrown. Which side was the Schmeisser-toter on, and to which side did the machine gunner belong?
Before Theo could do more than frame the question, somebody right here in the crowd of panzer crewmen shouted, “They can’t get away with plotting against the Führer!”
“The hell they can’t!” somebody else yelled. Yes, the chickens were coming home to roost, and they weren’t wasting any time doing it.
With a meaty thud, somebody’s fist connected with someone else’s jaw. Somebody yelled “Death to the traitors!” at the same time as somebody else yelled “Down with the Nazi swine!”
In an instant, the panzer crews were flailing away, sometimes one against another, sometimes man against man inside a single crew as some showed they were for Hitler and others against him. Theo stuck out a leg and tripped a man he knew to be a loudmouthed Nazi. When he scrambled to his feet, one boot just happened to connect with the back of the loudmouth’s head. It was only an accident, of course. Of course.
He wasn’t astonished to discover that Adi had flattened another Party sympathizer. If you were sitting next to somebody like that, what were you supposed to do? Wait till he flattened you? Not likely!
“Back to the panzer!” Sergeant Witt shouted. “My crew, back to the panzer!”
Theo couldn’t remember the last order he’d liked better. Inside the Panzer IV, they’d be safe from the slings and arrows of outraged National Socialists. And they could do some slinging and arrowing of their own if they had to.
On which side would they do it, though? Theo was sure of where he and Adi stood. He was pretty sure about Hermann Witt, too. Eckhardt and Poske, though … They’d never shown any sign of wanting to give Adi grief. That argued their hearts were in the right place.
Someone got in front of Adi and fell down quite suddenly. Whoever he was, he didn’t get up again. They scrambled into their panzer, slammed the hatches shut, and dogged them.
“Fire it up, Adi,” Witt said. “I won’t shoot first, but this is liable to be a big mess. We’ll take cover and figure things out later.”
“I’ll do it, Sergeant,” Stoss said. “That sounds like a terrific plan.” The engine rumbled to life.
Theo put on his radio earphones just in time to hear somebody say, “Our regiment stands behind the Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation. We will obey orders coming from the Committee.”
Schmeissers started barking, almost surely inside the encampment. As Adi put the Panzer IV in gear, another panzer’s main armament bellowed. Not all the regiment seemed ready to stand behind the Salvation Committee. Theo had wondered whether the coup would touch off a civil war. He wasn’t wondering any more.
Julius Lemp had always admired Colonel General Guderian. From everything he could see, the man got as much out of his panzers as anybody was likely to get. With every country’s hand-and factories-raised against the Reich-what could be more important?
He’d wondered about that for a long time. Now he had an answer. The Committee for the Salvation of the German Nation could be. Or the forces fighting the Committee could be, depending on who won.
They were going at it hammer and tongs. Kiel sounded as if it were in the middle of the world’s biggest fireworks display. If you looked out the window, you might think it was. Tracers and shell bursts lit up the night sky, now here, now there, now suddenly all over the place.
Of course, if you looked out the window you were also liable to get killed. Plenty of bullets that weren’t tracers were flying around. Rifles, submachine guns, and MG-34s and MG-42s added to the hideous cacophony. And a barracks hall across the courtyard from the one where Lemp was staying had taken a direct hit from a 105 round-or maybe it was a 155. Whatever it was, it had knocked down half the building and set the wreckage on fire. Sailors were hosing down the burning rubble and pawing through it, looking for people who might still be alive.
The really scary thing was, Lemp had no idea which side had shelled that barracks, or why. If something had come down over there, something could come down on this hall, too. He could die without having any idea why, or even who’d killed him.
He hadn’t signed up for that. (He’d signed up so he could surprise people on the other side and send them to the bottom, but he didn’t dwell on such things right this minute.)
Most of the Kriegsmarine, he judged, would go along with the Salvation Committee. Naval officers tended to be conservative professionals who had no great love for the Nazis.
Naval officers, yes. Ratings? Ratings might be another story. Or they might not. With a small start, Lemp realized he knew less than he should about what kind of politics ratings had. Some of them liked Hitler-he knew that. The ones who didn’t … The ones who didn’t commonly had sense enough to keep their mouths shut about it.
Someone knocked on the door.
The knock on the door in the middle of the night. Everyone’s worst nightmare, in the Reich no less than in the USSR. In ordinary times, at least you knew what to say when they came for you. Chances were a thousand to one it wouldn’t do you any good, but you tried. How could you even try, though, when you weren’t sure which faction the goons out there belonged to?
Lemp thought about pretending not to be there. But if they broke down the door (or just opened it-it wasn’t locked), things would go worse for him afterwards. The Committee or the Party? The lady or the tiger? He’d know in a second.
He opened the door.
Two petty officers with Mausers and a lieutenant with a Schmeisser scowled at him from the hallway. “Which side are you on?” one of the petty officers growled.
They didn’t tell him which side they were on. He’d either be right or he’d be dead. “The Committee,” he said. If not for the Gestapo man with the lizardy blinks and tongue licks who’d plucked Nehring from his boat for no visible reason, he might well have answered the other way. He hated the idea of going against duly constituted authority. But when duly constituted authority was a pack of hooligans, he hated giving in to it even more.
Had he answered the other way, he would have been lying in a pool of his own blood a few seconds later. As things were, the armed men grinned like fierce baboons. “There you go, sir!” the petty officer said. Now he gave Lemp his title of respect. Now I’ve earned it, Lemp thought dizzily.
“Have you got a weapon?” the lieutenant asked.
“No. It’s back in my cabin on the U-boat,” Lemp answered. “I didn’t think I’d need to go shooting things up.”
“Here. Use this, then.” The lieutenant pulled a Walther pistol from his belt. Gingerly, Lemp took it. The lieutenant went on, “Come with us. We’re cleaning out the Nazi turds.”