The War That Came Early: Coup d'Etat Read Free

and hard and dangerous, and that the United States of America will emerge triumphant at the end of that road.”
    He got another hand then. Peggy remembered that, back in the days of ancient Rome, people used to keep track of how manytimes the Senate applauded the Emperor when he addressed it. She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. Maybe Herb told her once upon a time—they’d rammed a big dose of Latin down his throat in high school and college. Somebody needed to keep track of the ovations in Washington today.
    “We are going to become the arsenal of democracy, as I said in my Fireside Chat not long ago,” the Presidentcontinued. “We must be strong enough to defeat the enemy in the Far East and to ensure that no enemy anywhere in the world can possibly defeat us.”
    Yet again, people clapped and cheered. How many of those people had the faintest idea what war was like? Oh, some of the men would have gone Over There a generation before. They’d seen the elephant, as their grandfathers would have said in Civil Wardays. Most of FDR’s audience, though, didn’t really have any idea of what he was talking about.
    Peggy did. She’d watched the Nazis storm into Czechoslovakia and promptly start tormenting Jews. She’d watched them march off freighters and into Copenhagen, ruining her chances to get back to the States for a while. She’d huddled against their bombs—and, while she was stuck in Germany, against Englishbombs, too, and maybe even against French and Russian bombs as well.
    So she knew as much about what war was like these days as anyone who hadn’t carried a rifle could. Some people cheering Roosevelt would find out just that way. And others would learn when young men they loved came back maimed or didn’t come back at all. Would they still be cheering then?
    The truly scary thing was, all the anguishand agony Roosevelt wouldn’t talk about in an inaugural address were going to be needed. The horror Peggy had seen and gone through in Europe made her much too sure of that.
    SARAH GOLDMAN EYED the clerk behind the barred window in the Münster
Rathaus
with nothing but dismay. She’d never faced this fellow before. It wasn’t that he was gray-haired and had a hook where his left hand should havebeen. No one young and healthy would have sat behind that window. Young, healthy German men wore
Feldgrau
these days, not a baggy brown suit that reeked of mothballs.
    But a button gleamed on the clerk’s left lapel. It wasn’t the ordinary swastika button that proved somebody belonged to the Nazi party. No: The gold rim on this button showed that the clerk was one of the first 100,000 Party members.He’d been a Nazi long before Hitler came to power, in other words. He’d like Jews even less than most National Socialists.
    “You wish?” he said as Sarah came to the head of the queue. He sounded polite enough for the moment. Well, why not? She was a prettygirl—not beautiful, but pretty. And, with her light brown hair, hazel eyes, and fair skin, she didn’t look especially Jewish.
    “I need …” Shehad to nerve herself to speak louder than a whisper. “I need to arrange the paperwork for my wedding.” There. She’d said it, and loud enough for him to hear it, too.
    “You should be happy when you do that, dear.” The clerk might be graying and mutilated, but he noticed a pretty girl, all right. Behind the reading glasses that magnified them, his own pale eyes seemed enormous as he studied her.He held out his good hand. “Let me have your identity booklet, and we’ll begin.”
    “All right,” Sarah said as she took the indispensable document out of her purse. It wasn’t all right, and it wasn’t going to be.
    He held the document down with the hook and opened it with the fingers of his meat hand. He was no slower or clumsier than someone who hadn’t got hurt. How many years of practice and repetitionlay behind him?
    “Oh,” he said in a voice suddenly colder than the nasty weather