Heroes Page 23

  He was about to go to her, when she pulled away and looked back. She was smiling. She waved him on.

  Schey hurried down into the ditch, grabbed their bags, and rushed up to where she had gone around to the passenger side of the car.

  Schey threw their bags in the back seat after Eva crawled in, and then he climbed into the front seat. A very fat man sat behind the wheel which rubbed his bare belly where his pullover shirt had hiked up. The man had stuffed a large red and black handkerchief between the bottom rim of the steering wheel and his belly to avoid chafe. He was smiling uncertainly.

  “This isn’t what it looks like, believe me,” Schey said, sticking out his hand and smiling.

  The fat man just looked at him for a moment, but then he reached out and shook Schey’s hand. “I saw the girl … the …”

  “My wife,” Schey said. “I’m Karl Veltman. My wife’s Elizabeth. Our car broke down.” Schey looked out the windshield.

  “Hell, the mechanic said it’d take weeks, maybe forever, before we’d get the parts. And a hell of a lot more money than we’ve got.”

  “We’re headed up to Denver,” Eva said from the back seat.

  She leaned up over the back of the front seat, between Schey and the fat man. “We both got jobs up there.” She grinned. “Course, the jobs don’t do us a bit of good unless we can get to ‘em. You headed up that way?”

  “I’m going over to Tucumcari. Route 66. ‘Fraid I’m going in the wrong direction for you,” the fat man said. His voice was gentle and pleasant.

  Shit, Schey thought. He reached leisurely into his pocket for “&2s

  Vfs-Z the gun, but then decided against it. He was not a common murderer. If he did kill this man, his body would be found and the chase would be on.

  “Hell,” Schey said.

  Eva said something in the back, but he ignored her. “Tucumcari.

  We might be able to get over to Amarillo and get a ride up from there easier than from down here.”

  “The Raton Pass is open, if that’s what you’re worried about,” the fat man said. They still had not moved. Several cars and a truck had passed them on the highway. Schey felt very exposed here. But he also had the feeling that the man was lying to them.

  “No, it’s the traffic. Can’t get a ride if there’s no cars on the highway.”

  The fat man shook his head.

  “Look,” Schey said, taking a chance. He reached for the car door and opened it. “Thanks, anyway. But if you don’t want to help us out, we understand.” Schey half turned toward the back.

  “Don’t we, honey?” he said.

  “Sure,” Eva said on cue. “It’ll be morning before too long.”

  “Close the door,” the fat man said after a moment’s hesitation.

  “Damnation, ain’t nobody going to accuse me of leavin’ someone to camp out all night on some stupid highway.”

  Schey looked at the man. “You sure now?”

  “Yeah, sure,” the fat man said. “Close the door.”

  Schey closed the door. The fat man pulled away from the side of the road, accelerated through the gears, and then looked in the mirror at Eva.

  “If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am, you sure got a nice set of gams.”

  Schey had to laugh. Eva did too. “Why, thank you, Mr … ?”

  Eva’s voice trailed into a question mark.

  “Shamus. Burt Shamus. I work for Westinghouse. We just shipped a big load into Albuquerque. It’s headed up to Santa Fe someplace. I had to ride along to make sure no one swiped it.”

  “Whose car?” Schey asked. Westinghouse was one of the prime contractors for the Manhattan Project.

  “Company car,” Shamus said.

  “So, what’re you doing heading over to Tucumcari?”

  Shamus shook his head. He seemed embarrassed. “Ain’t so,” he said. He glanced over at Schey. “I was lying.”

  “Where you headed then?”

  “Denver,” Shamus said. “Denver, Colorado, and you and your missus are welcome to ride along.”

  rfjlfcja “They’ve killed him! The. generals have killed him in Rastenburg,” Marti screamed as she raced down the broad corridor.

  Deland looked up toward the stairs. Dannsiger and the others > seated around the long, narrow table in the basement of the girls’ school looked up as well. It was late.

  Marti’s voice echoed off the corridor walls. She kept screaming.

  They listened as she clattered down the stairs.

  “They’ve killed him! My God, they’ve killed him!”

  Deland jumped up and met the distraught woman at the open steel door. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes wild, her complexion pale. She was out of breath as she fell into Deland’s arms.

  “Oh … God, Helmut, they’re talking about it on the street.

  They say it’s on the radio.”

  “Did you hear an official broadcast?” Deland demanded, grabbing her shoulders.

  They had worked for the past three days on a plot to get to the Fiihrer at his bunker. They knew he was gone at the moment (although they had no idea where) by the fact security around the Reichs Bunker was so lax.

  “Everyone is talking about it! Don’t you believe me?” She squirmed out of his grasp and ran to Dannsiger. “It’s true,” she shouted, looking into his eyes. “There was a bomb at his bunker in Rastenberg. It exploded and he was killed. The war is over!”

  There was a joyous, though oddly pitched tone to her voice.

  Deland suspected she was finally on the verge of cracking up.

  It was a wonder they weren’t all crazy by now. Over the past few days Marti had hung on their plot to kill Hitler. For her, it symbolized the end of the war, although she understood that peace would not be quite so easily obtained. She, like the others, knew that there would be a lot more suffering in Berlin before they began the long road back.

  “Let’s hope it’s true,” Dannsiger said. He sent two of the others up to see if they could find out for sure. Then he turned to Deland. “I’m glad it happened now. There isn’t a chance of success with this, Helmut.” He glanced at the sketch diagrams of the bunker. “You understand that, don’t you?”

  Deland nodded. Their own plot to kill Hitler was impossible.

  They had known it from the beginning. Only now were they willing to face it.

  Tonight he would radio Bern and tell them that they had thought it out, but that the job could not be done. They would order him out then. But now he wasn’t at all sure he wanted to leave.

  Marti was looking from Dannsiger to Deland and back again.

  At this particular moment she seemed so tiny, so frail. Like all of them, she had not been getting enough to eat. She had been thin in the first place; now, when she was undressed and they were making love, Deland could see and feel her ribs, and her pelvis jutted out from her pale, nearly blue skin.

  “What are you talking about?” she screamed. “Didn’t you hear me? He is dead! The generals have killed him!”

  Dannsiger took her shoulders. “Listen, Marti, it may not be true. We have heard this news before.”

  “No!” she screeched. She backed off.

  “If it is true, then the war will soon end, although it will be very difficult for us in Berlin,” Dannsiger said, glancing at Deland. “If it is not true, if they tried to kill him and failed as they have each time before, then it will still be very difficult here in Berlin. For all of us.”

  “No,” she whimpered.

  “You will have to hold yourself together a little longer, my dear.”

  “It’ll be all over, in any event, very soon,” Deland said.

  She looked at him, her eyes very wide, and doelike. “You’re both in this together,” she said. “This is a big game for you.

  Men love to make war. It is they who start them, they who fight them. It is us women who must suffer.” She was nearly irrational now.

  “It’s not true, Marti,” Dannsiger said gently.

&nb
sp; She backed farther off.

  Stay or go, Deland thought, watching her. He did not love her.

  Or at least he didn’t think he did, but he felt so damned responsible for her well-being. He could not simply desert her. No matter what happened.

  He glanced at the sketches. That project was out. But there was the other thing he had been avoiding. If he remained here in Berlin, it would have to be attended to immediately. His own survival was at stake.

  Deland stepped around the table and went over to Marti, but she shrank back to the doorway.

  “You’re no different,” she said. “You don’t want it to end.

  You enjoy this.”

  Stay or go, he asked himself again. The question was like a metronome in his head. If he was going, it would have to be very soon, now that their own plot to assassinate the Fuhrer was scrapped. And if he was staying, he would have to deal with Rudy Gerhardt.

  “Why don’t you go upstairs to your room?” Deland said.

  She didn’t move.

  “We will tell you when we find out for sure.”

  Someone came down the stairs, and Marti shrank away from the steel door.

  One of Dannsiger’s people came in. He was holding himself stiffly erect, as if he had been hurt. There was a terribly pained expression on his face, deep in his eyes. It took Deland”s breath away.

  “What is it, Karl? What has happened?”

  “It is on the radio. The bomb … failed to do the job.”

  “Hitler lives?”

  Karl nodded. “The Fuhrer lives: He wasn’t even hurt, the announcer said. They are playing marching music.” He lowered his head, held it there for a moment, and then raised his hands to his face and began to weep bitterly, his shoulders heaving. But he made no noise.

  Marti stared at him for a long time. She shuddered, then rushed out of the room and raced upstairs.

  For a long time Dannsiger and Deland stood in embarrassed silence as the other man cried. Deland was the first to move.

  “Destroy our sketches. I’ll radio and tell them it’s a no-go.”

  “You don’t want to … try?” Dannsiger asked.

  “No.”

  “Are you going to leave us?”

  The question was really hammering inside Deland’s skull now.

  He shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m staying.” He had not told anyone about Gerhardt. But how could he? The man wore the Iron Cross. His leg had been shot off. He was a hero of the Reich. How did you plan to kill a German hero and tell other Germans about it? Dannsiger and the others hated Hitler, not Germany.

  “Are you all right?” Dannsiger asked. He sensed something was wrong.

  “Yes,” Deland said. “I’ll send the message now.”

  “Will you be back this evening?”

  Deland was about to say no, but then he looked toward the stairs. Marti would be needing him. And he knew that he would be needing her. He nodded. “Later,” he said.

  He thought about taking a gun, but decided against it. The noise would be far too loud, unless another bombing raid was going on at the exact moment he needed to use it.

  He also thought about a knife, but in his mind’s eye he could see the gruesome mess it had created in Maria Quelle’s apartment in Wolgast.

  He was being a fool. On several counts. It would not be easy to run now. In fact, it would be very difficult merely to get out of Berlin. But that was nothing in comparison to what he knew he would have to do tonight.

  If it ever got out that he had killed a hero of the Reich, his life in Germany would be forfeit. Even Dannsiger and his people would have no use for him.

  Gerhardt lived to the north, just within Wedding. It was very dark outside when Deland left the girls’ school, hesitated a moment within the gate, and then hurried up the street.

  A low overcast was beginning to move in again. There would be no air raid tonight. In the distance he thought he could hear martial music, but then it faded as the gentle breeze switched directions.

  Gerhardt had given him his address only after Deland had promised to bring some eggs. “Eggs, my God, it has been so long since I have had an egg.”

  “Are you married yet, Rudy?” Deland had asked. “Children?”

  Gerhardt shook his head sadly. “I had a girl. But afterwards … after my leg, she went away.”

  “How about your parents?”

  “They’re dead, Robert. Their apartment building got a direct hit. They were on the top floor … American bombs …”

  “I’m sorry,” Deland said, touching the man’s arm.

  Gerhardt smiled wanly. “Eggs. Even if you could only get one from the quartermaster … tell him I would trade for this …”

  He held out his Iron Cross.

  “That’s all right,” Deland said. “I will bring you some eggs.”

  “Soon?”

  “Very soon.”

  Deland kept seeing Gerhardt’s hopeful eyes as he continued across town through the quiet night. The city would be in shock from the news about the Fiihrer’s near assassination and weary from the constant air raids over the past few nights. This was not a night to be caught out. Yet he did not think there would be many people on the streets. Even the soldiers would be sticking close to their posts. Everyone would be on full alert. But if a chance patrol caught him, he would be shot on sight.

  It was just midnight when he made it to Wedding, and three blocks later he reached Gerhardt’s apartment building in an area of shattered buildings, piles of rubble making many of the streets all but impassable and garbage piled in heaps.

  He could smell wood smoke, and something else, some sickly sweet odor of cooking. He did not want to think just what it was someone was cooking as he passed. The people of Berlin were becoming desperate.

  He stopped in the shadows at the corner and studied the street.

  He did not want to be caught in any kind of a trap. Gerhardt might just as well have contacted the Gestapo. They could be waiting for him.

  He turned and worked his way around to the far end of the street, then went through a debris-choked courtyard and along the narrow alley behind the buildings.

  It was pitch-black. Every few yards he had to stop and look up toward the overcast sky in order to get his bearings.

  Once he stopped and almost turned around and left. He was suddenly feeling very guilty about Gerhardt and about the promised ggs.

  Everything depended upon this night, though. If Gerhardt was not dealt with, sooner or later the man would go to the authorities (if he hadn’t already) and tell them about Deland, his old Gottingen school chum. He’d tell them where he had seen Deland. They’d close in on the school. So it wouldn’t be his own life that would be forfeit. At risk now were the lives of Dannsiger, Marti, and the other underground fighters, as well as the Allied crewmen processed through the basement.

  He had to climb over a pile of rubble beneath several thick wood beams that lay across the alley before he came to the back of Gerhardt’s building.

  Most of the rear of the apartment complex had been shattered by a near miss in some bombing raid. Deland picked his way carefully through the jumbled piles of brick and wood and glass and bits of furniture, finally crawling around a canvas curtain that covered the opening into the front portion of the first-floor stair hall.

  The building smelled of urine and human feces. Water dripped from a section of ceiling that was half falling down.

  Deland stepped around it and started up the stairs. Gerhardt said he lived on the third floor, just to the left of the stairwell. He lived alone.

  At the first landing Deland stopped and held his breath so that he could listen for any sound. There was nothing, only the overpowering odor in his nostrils that made his stomach churn.

  He was certain that everyone in the building could hear his pounding heart.

  In school Gerhardt had not been a bad sort. Somewhat aloof, if Deland remembered correctly, superior that he was a German—a true Aryan—and
Deland simply an American. Gerhardt used to make jokes about the Polacks and about the dirty Frogs, but he was condescending about Americans.

  Deland continued up a step at a time, careful not to trip over the garbage that lay everywhere.

  At the third-floor landing he could hear the sound of dripping water again. Toward the back of the corridor he could see the roof of the building across the narrow alley. Suddenly he realized that there was a gaping hole in the building. The third floor corridor ended at the hole. Most of the ceiling and back wall were gone.

  Something felt very wrong to Deland. He could almost sense it in the air. He felt as if a million eyes were watching him from the darkness. Suddenly he had a terrible sense of claustrophobia, of frustration with what he was doing. One more death in the midst of all this death and destruction: Could it mean anything toward the final outcome?

  He stepped away from the stairs, crossed the narrow, filthy corridor and reached out to touch the door. It was the only one on this side. He realized that Gerhardt’s apartment fronted on the street. He listened a moment longer, but hearing nothing he tried the door. It was not locked.

  Deland pushed it open, a terrible stench coming from inside, making him gag. When his stomach settled, he held his breath again to listen. Someone was inside the pitch-black room. He could hear the regular breathing.

  He stepped inside and closed the door. The odors were of human waste, of a long-unwashed body, and of some rotting, putrescent wound; the last smell was cloyingly sweet.

  “Rudy?” he called softly. There had to be blackout curtains on the windows.

  The breathing across the room was interrupted.

  “Rudy?” he called softly again.

  “Wer istt’ Gerhardt said. Deland recognized his voice.

  “It is me: Robert. I have brought you some eggs,” Deland said, hating the lie. He was shaking.

  There was a shuffling. A match was struck. Rudy Gerhardt, sitting up in the middle of a pile of filthy rags and blankets beneath the curtains at the window, reached with the flame toward a candle. “Robert,” he said, smiling. “You’ve finally come.”

  It was all wrong! Gerhardt didn’t give a damn about the eggs, after all. But he had been waiting for Deland to show up.