In The Presence Of My Enemies

"Jesus Christ!" Priepke said harshly. "You know what Hitler said about the Japs in Mein Kampf. If they didn't have Aryans to steal ideas from, their culture would freeze solid again likethat." He snapped his fingers.

"Do you want to talk about politics or computers?" Walther asked. "I don't care about politics. I don't care at all. What I care about are computers. The Japanese have some ideas we can use, and I think we can extract them without too much trouble. Which counts for more, ideology or the operating system?"

"You wouldn't have dared talk like that in Himmler's time, let alone Hitler's."

"Oh, yes, I would," Walther said. "The Russians had a terrific panzer in the Second World War. The T-34 was better than anything we brought against it, but we had better crews, so we won. Our next panzer, the Panther, borrowed-stole-all sorts of ideas from the T-34. The designers didn't care who built it. All they cared about was that it was a good machine."

His boss grunted again, this time meditatively. Then he said, "What if the code's got traps in it?"

"If we can't find them, are we really smarter than the Japanese?" Walther asked.

One more grunt. Priepke said, "I can't decide that on my own. I don't want the Security Police landing on us with both feet half an hour after we start." He stormed away from Walther's cubicle.

Walther wondered whether he should have kept his mouth shut. Would the Security Police start asking him nasty questions now? All he'd wanted was to do the job the people set over him told him to do. Was that too much to hope for? Maybe it was.No good deed goes unpunished, he thought sourly.

Gustav Priepke didn't come back for more than an hour. That worried Walther, too. Had he got his boss in trouble? Or was the trouble waiting forhim instead? He relaxed-a little-when Priepke did return. The big, burly man gave him a comic-opera Oriental bow. "Velly good. We tly that," he said in what he imagined was Japanese-accented German.

Walther made a face. "I wish I'd never suggested it," he said. Priepke laughed. He thought Walther was kidding, as he'd been. Walther knew too well he wasn't.

A chilly wind blew through Stahnsdorf. Rain was coming, but it hadn't got there yet. Inside the Gimpels' house, everything was warm and cozy. Heinrich moved at his wife's direction, putting this away and dusting that. He didn't move fast enough to suit her. "What's the matter?" she asked. "The Dorsches haven't been over in a while. Don't you feel like playing bridge?"

"It's not that," Heinrich said, and it wasn't. He was always ready to play bridge.

"What is it, then?" Before Lise went on, she looked around to make sure the girls were out of earshot. "Erika making you nervous?"

"Ha," he said in a hollow voice. Erika damn well did make him nervous. He hadn't said a word about running into her at Ulbricht's. He still didn't know what to think about that. The doorbell rang. He wasn't going to get a chance to decide now.

Lise was closer, so she opened the door. They all hugged and said hello and asked about children and said how glad they were to see one another. With a flourish, Willi handed Lise his usual offering of a bottle of wine. "Open it now," he said. "When we make mistakes at the bridge table, we always need something to blame them on."

Erika opened her mouth. Heinrich knew exactly what she was going to say. He didn't feel like having the sniping start before the Dorsches even got out of the front hall. Since he didn't, he forestalled her, asking, "How are-things?"

They could take that any way they wanted. Willi took it the way Heinrich had intended. He waggled his palm back and forth. "So-so," he said. "We have our ups and downs." Never one to leave a setup line alone, he finished, "Maybe not as often as when I was twenty-two, but we manage."

You'd manage more if it weren't for Ilse. Even you know that. Heinrich didn't say it. He did wonder whether Erika would, and how he could deflect her if she started to. Fortunately, she kept quiet. Heinrich wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of the look she sent Willi, though.

"Let me go open the wine," Lise said. "Why doesn't everybody else sit down?"

Willi dealt the first hand. "And now to give myself thirteen diamonds," he said grandly.

"As long as you give me thirteen hearts, I don't mind," Heinrich said.

Reality returned as soon as he picked up his hand, which showed the usual mixture of suits and ten points. Willi opened with a club. Heinrich passed. Erika said, "Two clubs," which meant she had some support for Willi but not a great deal. He took it to three, after which everybody passed. And he made three clubs with no overtricks but without much trouble.

"A leg," he said as Erika wrote their sixty points under the line.