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Susa
Where's Heinrich?she wondered again.Is he seeing this, too? That, she cared about. After a spell in Lothar Prutzma
"Where's that friend of yours, that Susa
"I don't know," Heinrich shouted back. "I haven't seen her in a while." The two of them had precarious perches on an armored perso
"If somebody starts shooting back at that trigger-happy maniac, we're all ground round." Willi sounded absurdly cheerful.
"This charming thought already occurred to me, thanks." Heinrich didn't.
Willi laughed. "So many crazy things have already happened today, I'm just not going to worry any more. One way or another, it'll all work out."
"Maybe it will." By then, Heinrich was past arguing. In fact, he couldn't very well argue, because a hell of a lot of crazy thingshad happened. The wind of their passage whipped around his glasses and made his eyes water. That wind was cool, but not especially clean; it was full of diesel exhaust from the other armored vehicles in this convoy. How many panzers and armored perso
Rat-a-tat-tat!The machine gu
Treads growling and grinding, the armored perso
"Back where we started from," Heinrich answered. There on the left stood Oberkommando der Wehrmacht headquarters; on the right, across the wide expanse of Adolf Hitler Platz, the Fuhrer 's palace and the vast, looming bulk of the Great Hall. Dead ahead towered the Arch of Triumph, as usual bathed in spotlights. Heinrich would have bet it had sharpshooters atop it. But were they wearing SS black or the Wehrmacht 's mottled Feldgrau?
The armored column of which the perso
"Wehrmachtor SS?" somebody called nervously.
"Bugger the SS with a pine cone," the machine gu
The whoops that came from the crowd said that was what they wanted to hear. But SS men held the Fuhrer 's palace. Sandbagged machine-gun nests outside the entrance were plenty to keep the people at a respectful distance. Panzers and armored perso
Heinrich didn't see any Waffen -SS armor. Maybe Lothar Prutzma
Or does it show I'm not as smart as I think I am?Heinrich wondered. Would Waffen -SS panzers suddenly charge out of the night, their cleated steel tracks tearing up the pavement like those of the Wehrmacht machines? He shrugged. If the officer in charge of the Wehrmacht armor couldn't anticipate a threat like that, he didn't deserve his shoulder straps.
A blackshirt in front of the entrance stepped forward, his hands conspicuously empty. Try as he would to hold it steady, his voice quavered a little when he asked, "What do you want?"
"Globocnik!" Half a dozen Wehrmacht panzer commanders hurled the acting Fuhrer 's name in his face.
One of them added, "We know he's in there. We saw him come in this afternoon."
The crowd of angry civilians with the Wehrmacht men took up the cry: "Globocnik! Globocnik! We want Globocnik!" In a different tone of voice, those shouts would have warmed any politician's heart. As things were, if Heinrich had been Odilo Globocnik, he would have been looking for a place to hide.
Licking his lips, the SS man said, "You are speaking of the rightful Fuhrer of the Greater German Reich and of the Germanic Empire. He orders you-he commands you-to disperse."
Maybe the panzer commanders answered. If they did, they couldn't make themselves heard even with bullhorns. The crowd's roars drowned them out. "Heinz Buckliger is the rightful Fuhrer!" people shouted, and, "We won't take orders from Globocnik!" and, "Down with the SS!" Heinrich gleefully joined that last chant. He liked the others, but that one hit him where he lived.
"This is nothing but treason!" The SS man had got his nerve back. He sounded angry now, not frightened. "We will not surrender him!"
"Then you're going to be mighty sorry," one of the Wehrmacht panzer commanders said. The crowd bayed agreement.
"So will you, if you try to take him," the SS man answered.
He was used to making people afraid. He was good at it, too. After all, fear was his stock in trade. The German people had had almost eighty years in which to learn to fear the SS. But today, as Heinrich had seen in front of Rolf Stolle's residence, fear was failing. And intimidating men in panzers that carried big guns was a lot harder than scaring civilians who couldn't fight back.
Jeers and curses rained down on the SS man's head. More rained down on Odilo Globocnik's head. Was he listening, there inside the Fuhrer 's palace? With a strange, snarling joy Heinrich had never known before, he hoped so. The SS man, in his own coldblooded way, had style. He clicked his heels. His arm shot out toward the crowd in a Party salute. He spun on his heel, executed an about-face of parade-ground perfection to turn his back on the Wehrmacht soldiers and the people, and marched away to his comrades.
And, to a certain extent, his intimidation worked even against his formidable foes. He might have been-Heinrich thought he was-bluffing when he warned that the SS could make the Wehrmacht sorry. But the panzers' ca
Heinrich never knew exactly how long the impasse lasted. Somewhere between half an hour and an hour was his best guess. What broke it was a high, clear sound that pierced both the yells from the crowd and the diesel rumble of the armored fighting vehicles: the sound of one man laughing.
The man was a Wehrmacht panzer commander. Like his fellows, he wore radio headphones. He laughed again, louder this time, and raised a bullhorn to his mouth. "Give it up, you sorry bastards!" he blared. "Prutzma