
view the most wonderful and terrible avenue that world boasted. Blasé as any native, Heinrich usually
paid scant attention to the marvels of his home town. Today being what it was, though, the oohs and ahhs
of people seeing them for the first time made him notice them, too.
Sentries from theGrossdeutschland division in ceremonial uniform goose-stepped outside their barracks.
Tourists on the sidewalk, many of them Japanese, photographed theFührer ’s guards. Inside the barracks
hall, where tourists wouldn’t see them, were other troops in businesslike camouflage smocks. They had
assault rifles, not the ceremonial force’s old-fashionedGewehr 98s, and enough armored fighting vehicles
to blast Berlin to rubble. Visitors from afar were not encouraged to think about them. Neither were most
Berliners. But Heinrich reckoned upGrossdeutschland ’s budget every spring. He knew exactly what the
barracks held.
Neon lights came on in front of theaters and restaurants as darkness deepened. Dark or light, people
swarmed in and out of the huge Roman-style building that held a heated swimming pool the size of a
young lake. It was open twenty-four hours a day for those who wanted to exercise, to relax, or just to
ogle attractive members of the opposite sex. Its Berlin nickname was theHeiratbad, the marriage bath,
sometimes amended by the cynical to theHeiratbett, the marriage bed.
Past the pool, the Soldiers’ Hall and the Air and Space Ministry faced each other across the street. The
Soldiers’ Hall was a monument to the triumph of German arms. Among the exhibits it lovingly preserved
were the railroad car in which Germany had yielded to France in 1918 and France to Germany in 1940;
the first Panzer IV to enter the Kremlin compound; one of the gliders that had landed troops in southern
England; and, behind thick leaded glass, the twisted, radioactive remains of the Liberty Bell, excavated
by expendable prisoners from the ruins of Philadelphia.
Old people still called the Air and Space Ministry theReichsmarschall ’s Office, in memory of Hermann
Göring, the only man ever to hold that exalted rank. Willi Dorsch used its more common name when he
nudged Heinrich and said, “I wonder what’s happening in the Jungle these days.”
“Could be anything,” Heinrich answered. They both laughed. The roof of the ministry had been covered
with four meters of earth, partly as a protection against bombs from the air, and then lavishly planted,
partly to please Göring’s fancy (his private apartment was on the top floor). TheReichsmarschall was
almost fifty years dead, but the orgies he’d put on amidst the greenery remained a Berlin legend.
Willi said, “We aren’t the men our grandfathers were. In those days, they thought big and weren’t
ashamed to be flamboyant.” He sighed the sigh of a man denied great deeds by the time in which he
chanced to live.
“Poor us, doomed to get by on matter-of-fact competence,” Heinrich said. “The skills we need to run
the Empire are different from the ones Hitler’s generation used to conquer it.”
“I suppose so.” Willi clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I envy you your contentment here and now. I
almost joined theWehrmacht when I was just out of theHitler Jugend . Sometimes I still think I should
have. There’s a difference between this uniform”—he ran a hand down the front of his double-breasted
greatcoat—“and the ones real soldiers wear.”
“Is that your heart talking, or did you just remember you’re not eighteen years old any more?” Heinrich
said. His friend winced, acknowledging the hit. He went on, “Me, I’d fight if theVaterland needed me,
but I’m just as glad I don’t have to carry a gun.”
“We’re all probably safer because you don’t,” Willi said.
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