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Plenty of cream and plenty of sugar in the coffee, a Strauss waltz coming from the radio, a couple of song thrushes and a blackbird hopping in the back yard hunting for worms…It wasn't bad. It would have been better if she hadn't gone through terror not long before, but it wasn't bad.
And then the waltz disappeared. It hadn't ended; it just stopped, halfway through. Close to a minute of dead air followed.Somebody's going to catch it, Lise thought. Foulups like that didn't happen very often.
Music began again. But this still wasn't the vanished waltz. It was "Deutschland uber Alles." The "Horst Wessel Song" came hard on its heels. Lise's brief sense of peace had shattered well before she heard the second national anthem. There hadn't been a mistake at the radio station. Something had gone wrong, badly wrong, somewhere in the wider world.
The "Horst Wessel Song" ended. After another stretch of silence, a man's voice came on the air: "The following important statement comes to you from the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich."
What the devil is the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich?Lise wondered. She'd never heard of it. The government had nine million different committees and bureaus and commissions, so she didn't know how much that proved, but if it wasn't important, what was it doing on the air like this?
"the Fuhrer, Heinz Buckliger, has been taken ill on the island of Hvar," the man said. "As a result of this illness, he no longer has the capacity to rule our beloved Reich. Under such emergency conditions, the State Committee will administer affairs."
Lise frowned. That sounded like…But it couldn't be. Nobody since the Night of the Long Knives, more than seventy-five years earlier, had tried to seize power like this.
The a
"Du lieber Gott!" Lise exclaimed. Whoever was on the State Committee for the Salvation of the Greater German Reich, they really meant it.
"By order of the State Committee, citizens of the Reich are to remain calm," the a
Aha!Lise thought. Now she could make a good guess about who was behind the Committee and the Putsch.
"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." What did the a
"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 a
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 Prutzma
"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?"
Ru
"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.