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Daddy came up the steps. "Did you tell them about the surprise yet?"
"Of course not," Mommy answered. "If I told them, it wouldn't be a surprise any more, would it?" Naturally, that set all three Gimpel girls clamoring. Their mother looked i
They ran in. Roxane's gleeful squeal rang out a split second ahead of her sisters'. The cake was enormous, and covered with gooey white icing. Big blue letters spelled out WELCOME HOME! When Mommy cut the cake, it proved to be dark, dark chocolate, with cherries and blueberries between the layers. She gave them huge slices, and when Francesca asked, "Can we have some more?" she didn't say anything about ruining their appetites. She just handed out seconds as big as the firsts.
Everything was so wonderful, it was almost worth getting grabbed by the Security Police. Almost.
Walther Stutzman muttered to himself. Threading his way past the electronic traps on the virtual road that led to Lothar Prutzma
No, what made him mutter was not finding what he was looking for. Heinrich had given him a good description of the man who'd released him from prison: tall, blond, a major in the Security Police. By what the man had said, he was a Jew.
But Walther had been pretty sure he knew about all the handful of Jews in the SS. None of them, from what he recalled, matched this fellow. Looking through the records only confirmed that.
So who was the major, then? More to the point,what was he? Someone who'd tried a last trick to get a suspected Jew to reveal himself? That would have been Walther's guess, but it didn't fit the way Heinrich had described the scene a couple of days earlier. A joker? Or a real Jew, unknown to Walther and his circle of friends?
That would be good-the more who survived, the better. But it also raised doubts, frightening ones. Now somebody outside the circle, somebody no one in the circle knew, knew something about somebody in it. The last thing a Jew in the Third Reich wanted was for anybody to have a handle on him.
What can I do?Walther wondered. One thing that occurred to him was tracking down everybody on duty at the prison the day Heinrich was released. Not many majors would have been there. One of them should have been the man who turned his friend loose.
Before he could do that, though, his boss came back from lunch and bellowed, "Walther! You here, Walther?"
Three quick keystrokes, and everything incriminating vanished from his monitor. Three more made his electronic trail vanish. "I'm here," he called. "What's up?"
Gustav Priepke stuck his beefy face into Walther's cubicle. "You smart son of a bitch," he said fondly. "You goddamn know-it-all bastard."
"I love you, too," Walther said in his usual mild tones. His boss roared laughter. Still mildly, he asked, "Could you at least tell me why you're swearing at me today?"
"Delighted, by God," Priepke answered. "You're not only a smart son of a bitch, you're a thieving son of a bitch, too. You know that?"
Excitement tingled through Walther. Now he had a pretty good idea of what his foul-mouthed boss was talking about. "The code ran, did it?"
"Bet your sweet ass it did," Gustav Priepke said. "And backward compatibility looks as good as you said it would. We've got a real live modern operating system, or we will once we root out the usual forty jillion bugs. And we won't lose data, on account of it'll be able to read all our old files."
"That's-terrific," Walther said. Computer experts in the Reich had talked about modernizing the standard operating system for years. They'd talked about it, but they hadn't done it-till now. He was proud he'd had a part, and not such a small one, in turning talk into the begi
And then he wonderedwhy he was proud. A new operating system would only make German computers more efficient. It would help the government work better, and the government included the SS. It might make the search for hidden Jews more effective. This was a reason to be proud?
Yes, in spite of everything, it was. If he didn't take professional pride in his own skill, his own competence, life turned empty. Whatever he did, he wanted to do well.
As smoothly as only a man with no worries in the world could, his boss changed the subject: "You going to vote when the elections for the new Reichstag come up in a few weeks?"
"I suppose so," Walther answered. "You know I don't get very excited about politics." He didn't show that he got excited about politics, which wasn't the same thing at all. But Priepke-and the rest of the outside world-saw only the calm mask, not the turmoil behind it.
"Shit, I don't get excited about the usual politics, either," Gustav Priepke said. "But this isn't the usual garbage-or it had better not be, anyhow. If you've got a chance to make a real difference, grab with both hands." The gesture he used looked more nearly obscene than political, but got the message across.
"You really think it will make a difference?" Walther asked.
"It had better, by God," Priepke rumbled ominously. "You wait and see how many Bonzen go out on their ears when they run where people can vote against 'em. A lot of those stupid bastards really believe everybody loves them. I want to see the looks on their fat faces when they find out how wrong they are." Gloating anticipation filled his laugh.
Without answering in words, Walther pointed up to the ceiling with one index finger and cupped his other hand behind an ear. Had his boss forgotten he was bound to be overheard by someone from Lothar Prutzma
Priepke gestured again, this time with undoubted, un-abashed obscenity. "Hell with 'em all," he said. "That's the point of this election-to teach the goddamn snoops we've got lives of our own. And if they don't like it, they can screw themselves."
He means it,Walther thought dizzily.He doesn't care if they're listening. He doesn't think it matters. He looked up to-no, past-the ceiling he'd just pointed at.Please, God, let him be right.
Another department staff meeting. Another dimly lit conference room foggy and stinking with Franz Oppenhoff's cigar smoke and i
At the head of the long table, the chairman stood up. Professor Oppenhoff waited till all eyes were on him. Then, after a couple of wet coughs, he said, "A change is coming. It is a change for which we must all prepare ourselves."
"The budget?" Half a dozen anxious voices said the same thing at the same time.
But Oppenhoff shook his head. "No, not the budget. The budget is as it should be, or close enough. I speak of a more fundamental change." If he'd been trying to get everyone's attention, he'd succeeded. Even Susa
Two or three professors who cared about nothing more recent than the transition from Old High German to Middle High German leaned back in their leather-upholstered chairs and closed their eyes. One of them began to snore, and so quickly that he must have had a clear conscience. Susa