Games of State - Tom Clancy [57]
Herbert had expected an army of skinheads and brownshirts-- shaved heads and tattoos, or crisply pressed pseudo-Nazi uniforms with armbands. There was a smattering of punks in pockets of ten here and half a dozen there. But most of the men and the few women he saw were dressed in casual designer clothes with fashionable if slightly conservative hairstyles. They were laughing and at ease, looking very much like young stockbrokers or attorneys who had come to Hanover for a convention. The scene was frightening in its ordinariness. This could be Herbert's beloved hometown.
With his trained eye, Herbert divided the tapestry into manageable fragments and then swallowed each image whole, rather than examining individuals. Later, if need be, he could pick out important details from memory.
As he inched by, Herbert also listened through the open window. He wasn't fluent in German, but he picked up enough to understand. These people were talking about politicians, computers, and cooking, for Chrissakes. It wasn't the way he'd imagined it would be, young men singing old German drinking songs. No wonder the authorities kept their distance from Chaos Days. If they cracked down here, they might have to lock up some of the nation's leading doctors, attorneys, stockbrokers, journalists, diplomats, or God knows who else. And God help them all if these people were ever motivated to move against the government. They weren't strong enough or united enough yet. But if they were, German rule could quickly unravel and be rewoven into a tapestry which the world would have every reason to fear.
His bowels tightened. Part of him screamed inside, They have no right, the young bastards. But another part of him knew that they had every right. Ironically, the defeat of Hitler had given them the right to say or do a great deal, as long as there was no racial or religious incitement or public denial of the Holocaust.
Toward the end of the street, there was a registration table with a half-dozen men and women behind it. The crowd waiting at the table was swelling, no one pushing, no one complaining, nothing to disrupt die general air of fellowship. Herbert slowed and watched as the organizers took money and passed out itineraries and sold black-and-red bumper stickers and lapel pins.
They've got a goddamn cottage industry going here, Herbert thought, amazed. All of it subtle, venomous, and legal. That was the problem, of course. Unlike the skinheads, who were considered low-caste neo-Nazis and spurned by people like these, the men and the few women here were smart enough to stay within the law. And when there was enough of them to field candidates and vote, Herbert had every confidence that they would change the law. Just as they'd done in March of 1933, when the Enabling Act gave Hitler dictatorial authority over the nation.
One of the hosts, a tall young man with sandy blond hair, stood stiffly behind the table. He shook the hand of each newcomer. He seemed less comfortable with the few grubbier skinheads than he did with the clean-cut men.
Even among the vermin there are castes, Herbert noted. He was intrigued as one of the scruffier new arrivals followed the handshake by throwing his arm in a traditional Nazi salute. It was an isolated, nostalgic gesture. The other men seemed uncomfortable with it. It was as though a drunk had come to the cash bar at a social function. They tolerated the salute but did not acknowledge it. Obviously there were schisms in the new Reich just as there had been in the old. Rifts which could be manipulated by outside forces.
Cars were piling up behind Herbert. Releasing the