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Before Esther could answer, the traffic noise around the Tiergarten changed. It was always there in the background, the only real reminder that the park lay in the middle of a great city. But suddenly it leaped from background to foreground. Esther had never heard such a deep-throated roar of diesel engines and rattling of treads, not even at a construction site.
She turned her head. Through the screen of bushes, she saw a column of panzers and armored perso
The panzers rumbled past and were gone. Esther turned to Walther, raw terror on her face. To her surprise, he leaned forward and kissed her on the lips, almost as if he were one of the pair of lovers not far away who hadn't even looked up as the deadly machines went by.
"Well, sweetheart, you were right," he said. "Sometimes you have to try." He got to his feet and hurried away, off toward the Zeiss works, off toward trouble. Esther stared after him, hoping she'd done the right thing, fearing she'd just made the worst mistake of her life.
The crowd in the square outside Rolf Stolle's residence was for the most part orderly and well-ma
Every so often, a chant of, "All the world is watching!" or, "We are the Volk! " would start up, last for a little while, and then die away. The rooftop cameras kept carrying pictures of the scene to the outside world. Heinrich hoped they did, anyhow. By the way the cameramen stayed with them, they were still working. He hoped so there, too. The more people who knew Berlin wasn't taking Lothar Prutzma
Putsch lying down, the better.
And then, instead of defiant chants, cries of alarm rang out from the distant fringes of the crowd: "Panzers! The panzers are coming!"
"Scheisse,"Willi Dorsch said, which summed up what ran through Heinrich's mind.
Some of the men and women who'd come to Stolle's residence decided they wanted no part of facing up to SS armor. They pressed away from the panzers and armored perso
Susa
Willi grabbed his arm. "Are you nuts?"
"Probably." Heinrich shook free. "Go the other way, if you'd rather. I won't hold it against you."
"Scheisse,"Willi said again, in doleful tones. "You're going to get both of us shot, or more likely just run over." As Heinrich had waited before following Susa
Berlin might still breed street fighters, but they were amateurs up against professionals. The panzers rolled over the barricades the crowd had run up as if they weren't there. As they crushed the second one, a horrible shriek rang out, for a moment rising above even the roar of their engines. After that, the lead panzer had blood on its left track.
The death might have broken the crowd. Instead, it infuriated the Berliners. They shook their fists at the black-coveralled panzer crewmen who rode with their heads and shoulders out of the vehicles. "Murderers!" they shouted. "Butchers! Assassins!Schweinehunde! "
Pulling a bullhorn out of the turret, the officer commanding the lead panzer aimed it at the crowd like a weapon. "Disperse!" he blared. "Disperse, in the name of the Volk of the Greater German Reich."
But that only roused fresh fury among his foes. "We are the Volk!" they shouted, over and over again. "We are the Volk!" Some of them added, "And who the hell are you?" They swarmed toward the armored vehicles. The driver of the lead machine stopped. He could only go forward by crushing scores of people under his treads-or by pulling out his personal weapon and opening fire on the crowd. He didn't. He was a fresh-faced young man, probably under twenty, and seemed astonished that people weren't listening to his superior's orders.
"Go home!" His superior seemed astonished, too, even with his voice electronically amplified. "Go home, and you will not be harmed!"
"We are the Volk! Weare the Volk!We are the Volk!" The chant swelled and swelled. Through it, individuals shouted insults at Lothar Prutzma
By then, Heinrich was up within ten or twelve meters of the lead panzer. He could see the frown on the driver's face, and the deeper one on the panzer commander's. Things were not going according to plan. The SS men didn't like that at all, and didn't seem to know what to do about it.
And Heinrich could also see the panzer's two machine guns, and the enormous yawning bore of the ca
"Disperse!" the panzer commander shouted again through the bullhorn. "Go peacefully to your homes, and you will not be harmed. In the name of the Volk of the Greater German Reich, disperse!" That was what they'd told him to say before he set out from his barracks, and he stubbornly went right on saying it.
They didn't seem to have told him what to do if it didn't work. And it didn't. Instead of making the people around Stolle's residence leave, it just seemed to make them more stubborn, too. "We are the Volk!" they shouted back, ever louder. "Weare the Volk!We are the Volk!"
The SS officer stared at them, his gray eyes wide. What was going on in his mind? Did he understand that what he'd been told and what he was seeing and hearing didn't add up? How could henot understand? Heinrich laughed at himself. SS men weren't trained to understand anything but the brute simplicity of orders.
But in that case, why hadn't this fellow already opened fire? Did he realize thatwas the Volk in front of him? Heinrich laughed again. Questions. Answering questions. What else was an analyst good for? When these questions got answered, it was all too likely to be with blood and iron. Bismarck could turn a phrase, all right.
Meanwhile, the tableau held. "We are the Volk!" Heinrich shouted again. Did the SS officer believe him, believe the others? He didn't start shooting, anyhow. "Weare the Volk!"
Gustav Priepke plopped his fat bottom down on the corner of Walther's desk. "It's a goddamn crock, that's what it is," Walther's boss said. On a smaller scale, he reminded Walther a little of Rolf Stolle.
"It certainly is," Walther answered, hoping Priepke would go away if he didn't say much. He wasn't supposed to have access to the networks where he needed to plant rumors about Lothar Prutzma