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"Is it all right?" Heinrich asked anxiously.
"It could be better," Lise said, and he flinched. Considering all the things that might have happened, and all the different kinds of unpleasantness that might have sprung from them, she decided she had to relent, and she did: "It could be worse, too. So I guess it's all right. But if any more beautiful blondes make a play for you, you might want to let me know a little sooner."
"I promise," he said.
She snorted. "Or, of course, you might not want to let me know at all. But I hope you do." He had no answer for that, which was, in its own way, reassuring.
When Susa
As in Prague, policemen stood around watching without doing anything. In their round, flat-crowned kepis, they looked even more French than the demonstrators. But they collaborated with the Reich more enthusiastically than the Czechs did-or they had up till now, anyhow.
For the French, collaboration had meant survival. To Germany, Czechoslovakia had been an a
And now, with anyone who'd lived under liberty, equality, and fraternity a white-haired ancient, these Frenchmen-and a few Frenchwomen, too-showed they remembered them. And they got away with it. Susa
Horst Witzleben said, "This peaceful demonstration was photographed by a German cameraman. No French televisor coverage was on the scene. The French regime would sooner not admit its citizens can find fault with it."
Susa
The next story was about corruption in the Iron Guard, the Romanian Fascist party. Susa
She wondered if the story after the St. Pauli Girl beer advertisement would be subversive, too, but it wasn't: it talked about the Brazilian football team, one of the favorites in the upcoming World Cup. Susa
"Isn't that interesting?" Susa
Heinz Buckliger had said before that he had his doubts about the Nazis' racial doctrines. He and his people were practicing what he'd preached. Here they'd shown black and brown men as human beings.
Would they ever do the same with Jews? Susa
Walther Stutzman used a couple of different portals to get into SS databases and see what the blackshirts were up to. He didn't like messing with them. Any time he poked around in there, he exposed himself to a certain risk of detection, even if he did have the proper passwords and some highly improper masking programs. Every so often, he went sniffing in spite of the risk. Not knowing what Lothar Prutzma
Today at lunch, he started in at one of the usual places, a weak spot that had been in the software ever since his father put it there. If and when the Reich finally did go over to the long-promised new operating system, it would have weak spots, too. Walther had put a few into the code himself. Out of so many millions of lines, who would find those few? One of these days, his son Gottlieb could exploit them.
That was what he was thinking as he started the electronic journey toward Lothar Prutzma
He didn't think so. He had programs that would muddy the trail, and he hadn't gone in far enough to be fully noosed…had he? He paused in indecision, something he didn't do very often. Then, reluctantly, he nodded to himself. Only one way to find out, and he badly needed to know.
He liked the second portal less than the first. It was closer to a busy stream of electronic traffic. If he made a mistake, he'd stick out like blood on the snow.Just like that, he thought unhappily. And if the bloodhounds were waiting for him here, too…
His finger stayed on the ABORT key all the way through the insertion process. If the hounds had been a little more subtle, they would have nabbed him the first time. He hated giving them another chance.
But, as far as he could tell, everything went fine now. He got inside the SS network without its being any the wiser. And, once he was inside, he could look at the other portal from the rear, so to speak. The trap pointed outward. He'd thought it would. People who designed traps like that were convinced of their own cleverness. They didn't think anyone could sneak up on them from behind.
And they had been very clever indeed, even if not quite clever enough. The more Walther studied their trap, the nastier it looked. If his probe had gone just a little farther through the portal, it would have been seized and traced back to its begi
He wondered if he could draw those teeth, leave the trap seeming dangerous but in fact harmless. Shaking his head, he decided against it, at least for now. That wouldn't be something to ad-lib on a lunch hour. If he tried it, he would have to be perfect. The trapper would come back every so often to see what he'd caught. Everything would have to look fine to him.