Heroes Read online

  Meitner shook his head. “No one reliable. There are one or two in New York. But that’s it.”

  Canaris leaned back and closed his eyes as he thought back to the hundreds of contingency plans he personally had worked out for his field agents. Schey had been his special case.

  If he could somehow make it clear of New Mexico, and was on the run, he’d come to New York to try to make contact. The New Mexico contact had been a trap. Schey would be wary now.

  Yet New York was his only way out of the country. From there, Newfoundland, then Greenland, and finally home. If the contacts hadn’t been compromised. If the airstrips were still intact. If the planes and personnel were still in place.

  Schey had to be stopped. But there was so little time. He had given Dulles all the information the OSS needed. Verdammt, were they all bungling fools?

  Another thought struck Canaris. If Schey had been trying to meet a contact, it meant he had more information. Most likely from the bomb laboratory at Los Alamos. It meant that if Schey did make it back to Germany—somehow, if he pulled that feat off—he’d have the immediate and sympathetic ear of the Fiihrer himself. Germany needed heroes just now. Schey would be perfect.

  Meitner was saying something else. Canaris focused on him.

  “They’ve moved the safe, meiner Admiral.”

  “What are you saying?” Canaris asked, something very cold clutching at his heart.

  “The old storeroom behind your old offices is empty. There is nothing there any longer. I could not ask about it for fear of raising suspicions. But your safe is simply gone.”

  ^ty’-., It was well past eleven o’clock by the time they had quit the desert plateau and had begun to seriously climb the switchback road toward the Raton Pass at nearly eight thousand feet. Eva was asleep in the back seat, and Schey had nodded off for about an hour.

  Burt Shamus had turned out to be a glad-hand sort, who before the war had been an industrial equipment salesman. Because of the manpower shortage, he had been made a special courier and escort for classified equipment produced by the Westinghouse Corporation. Most of the time, he told them, he traveled alone.

  The war had made him jumpy (which is why he had lied about going to Tucumcari), but his lonely job had also served to make him garrulous, and he had told Schey his entire life story, all the tense way through Santa Fe and across the desert through the night.

  Now he seemed tired. Schey lit a cigarette and held it out.

  “Care for a smoke, Burt?”

  Shamus glanced over. He shook his head. “Nope. I got heartburn that won’t quit. My eyes feel like someone’s poured hot sand in ‘em, and I gotta piss like a racehorse. Don’t need a fag.”

  Schey had to laugh. “How about if I drive for a while, and you catch some sleep?”

  “You mean it?” Shamus asked. “You wouldn’t mind?”

  “Pull over, Burt. You’re givin’ me the creeps the way you’ve been driving.” It was hard for Schey to speak so colloquially. But even as hard as he tried, he could see that Shamus, who had a flat mid western accent, would look at him oddly every now and then.

  Shamus slowed the car down and pulled over to the side of the road. He cut the lights, then got out, careful not to slam the door so as not to wake Eva, and he walked around to the passenger side where he urinated in the ditch.

  Schey scooted over to the driver’s side, and for just a moment he considered driving off without the man. But he decided against it. Sooner or later a car or a truck would come by. Shamus would flag it down and they would get to a police station, probably down in Trinidad, on the Colorado side of the pass. From there it would be a matter of telephones and radios that no car could outrun.

  Shamus got back in the car, Schey flipped the headlights on and pulled out onto the highway.

  “Wake me up if you feel yourself getting’ sleepy,” the fat man warned, lying back, his head against the doorpost.

  “Sure thing, Burt,” Schey said.

  Shamus was sound asleep within a few minutes.

  They crossed over the pass, some snow still in the higher mountains around them, and then they descended onto the Colorado high plains, the rolling hills like high waves on the ocean.

  They went through the town of Trinidad, then Ludlow and Aguilar—all very small, all predominantly Mexican—the well maintained highway rising and falling through the grasslands that paralleled the awesome wall of the Rockies close in to the west.

  By now the FBI would have figured that something had gone wrong at the ranch. Romero was there to tell them he had seen the FBI agent with the large hat driving off the ranch.

  The agent even waved. But they would not be fooled by that for very long.

  By now the search would have already spread outward from the ranch. North along Highway 44 to Cuba and Counselor, of course, and then back to U.S. 85 up to Santa Fe and down to Albuquerque.

  If they hadn’t found the Chevy by now, they would very soon.

  Certainly, by morning, someone at the railway station would notice that the gray car with out-of-state plates had been there all night. They’d call the police, and very quickly the bodies in the trunk would be discovered.

  They passed through the town of Walsenburg around three thirty, and Schey began to push the car, the speedometer topping seventy much of the time on the long straightaways, and he never drove less than sixty, although he was careful not to wake Shamus.

  There was some construction going on in Pueblo and the route was detoured to the west, around the downtown section, but soon they were heading north again.

  Shamus woke up about ten miles south of Colorado Springs, needing to urinate again, and then curled up and fell immediately asleep without, Schey suspected, even realizing what he had done or where he was.

  The mouqtains seemed very close through the southern part of the state, and especially through Colorado Springs. Pike’s Peak wasn’t far to the west, but Schey could not pick it out in the darkness.

  There was quite a bit of early morning traffic around the towns. Most of it was ranchers down for early morning coffee, Schey suspected. Then they’d be off to the feedlots or the mills.

  Schey realized that they were very conspicuous, traveling like this. They had Colorado plates on the car, but they were obviously out-of-towners—one man sleeping in the front, a woman sleeping in the back. It was gas-rationing time. What were they doing traveling?

  The sun was beginning to illuminate the eastern slopes of the mountains a wonderful golden color, and Schey sped up again. The land became dull and uninteresting for a while, but then they began to get signs that they were coming to a much larger city.

  There were junkyards, mostly empty now that the war was using up most of the scrap metal; small, junky motels that Schey looked at longingly; power lines overhead; little shacks, their east-facing windows lit with the morning sun like diamonds under a strong light.

  Eva woke up and looked around. “Where are we?” she demanded from the back seat.

  Schey looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Just coming into Denver,” he said.

  “God, have I slept that long? I feel like hell.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch, I gotta pee,” Shamus shouted, bolting straight up from a sound sleep.

  Schey laughed, and so did Eva. The fat man looked around, blinking, confused for the first few moments about where he was and about what was happening. But then it started to come back to him. He smiled sheepishly.

  “Good morning, Burt,” Schey said.

  Shamus yawned deeply. “Why don’t you pull over …” he started to say, but then he glanced ponderously over his shoulder and saw that Eva was awake. He blushed. “Er … it’s all right.”

  “We’re almost in town,” Schey said. “If you can wait, we’ll be there in another half-hour, and you can drop us off and be on your way.”

  “Hey, no, wait a minute now. I got a little place in town. I use it just when I come through. All the guys on the courier runs do.

>   Christ, it’s great. There’s always chow, plenty of cold beer, usually a little gin or maybe some scotch. What do you say? I don’t have to be back to Pittsburgh until Monday.”

  “Thanks a lot, Burt, but we’ve got to be on our way. We were supposed to be on the job yesterday as it was.”

  Denver was suddenly there, across a broad plain, the mountains gray-blue and golden behind it. Schey unconsciously sped up.

  Shamus shrugged. “I thought I’d ask.”

  They came up from the south on 85 through Littleton, a sleepy little one-tavern suburb, and half an hour later they were through downtown Denver, crossing over the stockyards on the long bridge that turned sharply right at the far end, railroad tracks below, and for a long way feedlots where tens of thousands of heads of cattle were processed for shipping. There was a rich, earthy odor to the air here that reminded Schey very strongly of his home in Germany. Eva had turned up her nose.

  “Are you sure I can’t convince you to come over to the hideout. We can rustle up some breakfast.”

  “No, thanks, Burt. Really, you’ve done enough for us already.

  We can’t thank you enough.”

  “Well, hell, I guess I want to thank you, too. I don’t suppose I would have made it this far without going to sleep, if I was lucky, or running off the road, if I wasn’t. Where do you want to get off?”

  “Just anywhere here. We’ve got our friends we’ll call. They’ll come pick us up.” Schey had seen the Union Station down by the stockyards. Once they were off the long bridge, he turned off the highway and pulled up. A Mexican tavern was across the street. It was just a little before seven, yet already there were a number of men seated at the bar.

  “This is no place …” Shamus started to protest.

  “This is fine, Burt. Honestly,” Schey said, turning to him. He was very tired. He stuck out his hand. “Really. Thank you, Burt.”

  Shamus shook his hand. “Well, damn. I thought you’d at least stop by for a drink or something.”

  “Thanks, Burt.” Schey got out of the car. It seemed strange to be on his feet. He helped Eva out of the back and got their suitcases.

  Shamus got out and came around. They shook hands again, and the fat man got behind the wheel.

  “Best of luck to you, now,” he said.

  “You, too,” Schey called. Eva waved, and they watched until the car turned the corner and was gone.

  Eva shivered. “It’s cold here,” she said. “And I’m hungry.”

  One of the men in the bar had turned around on his stool. He punched the man next to him and pointed toward Eva.

  “Let’s go,” Schey said. He hefted their suitcases and then headed back under the bridge toward the huge, ornately decorated Union Station. The place was old, but it was different than the old places in Germany. Here, age usually meant disrepair, or old-fashioned, out-of-date. In Europe, old meant tradition, well built beauty.

  “There’s a lot to be excited about here, though,” Eva had once told him.

  “Yes, what’s that?”

  “You never had cowboys and Indians in Germany.”

  Schey had laughed. “No, we never had that. We never had anything except dull kings and warrior princes. It was boring.”

  She had caught the obvious joke, and she had laughed at the time. But now Schey felt what she had meant about the American heritage. With the stockyards and loading pens to the west and the old Union Station straight ahead, he almost expected to see the stagecoach rattle up and cowboys riding by on their horses, six-shooters at their hips.

  There was a fair amount of traffic coming and going from the station: buses from town, trucks, people on foot. A lot of them were soldiers, their duffel bags slung over their shoulders.

  Inside the vast main, hall, Schey left Eva with the bags at the ladies’ rest room so she could clean up while he went across to check the train schedules and fares.

  They had spent very little of the money that they had dug out of the bolt hole package months ago in Eva’s apartment. There was slightly more than five thousand dollars left in the package, so that was no worry for them.

  Train schedules were displayed on two huge posters beneath glass that encircled massive support columns across from the ticket counters. One schedule was marked WEST; the second, EAST. Schey approached, slowly studying the rows and columns of names and times.

  He began to make sense of the thing, understanding that trains left Denver day and night—some of them for places such as North Platte, Grand Island, Kearney; others, evidently stopping trains, for small towns such as Hudson, Fort Morgan, Brush, Sterling.

  Finally he found the train that would take them to Chicago, with connections, the schedule read, with New York Central’s Twentieth Century to New York City.

  There were two Chicago trains each day. The first left Denver at 10:05 a. m., and the second at 10:05 p.m. The morning train had a one hour layover in Omaha, but arrived in Chicago at 9:30 a.m. the next day, in plenty of time for the noon departure of the Twentieth Century.

  Schey bought a pair of first-class tickets, roundtrip, scheduling their return for one week hence. If and when the FBI got this far in their search, they’d be checking second-class tickets oneway, not first-class roundtrip.

  He bought a newspaper at a stand, then went into the men’s room where he hired a razor, soap, a towel, and a wash cloth, and he quickly cleaned up. When he was finished, he had his shoes shined, then went back out.

  Eva was waiting for him beneath the big overhead clock. She looked greatly relieved and smiled when she spotted him.

  “Don’t you look handsome,” she said.

  “You don’t look so bad yourself,” he said. She had fixed her hair and had put on some makeup.

  They went across to the restaurant that Schey had spotted on the way in, and got a seat in a booth. They both ordered coffee.

  Schey ordered ham and eggs; Eva, ham and pancakes.

  “We leave at a little past ten,” he told her. “We’ve got a sleeping compartment to ourselves.”

  “To where, Bobby?”

  “We’ll be in Chicago by tomorrow morning, and Manhattan by Sunday morning, early.”

  “New York?” she said loudly, in surprise. She lowered her voice and leaned forward. “Why New York? Are you crazy? The , place is crawling with FBI.” I “That’s where-my contact is located.”

  “Like your Santa Fe contact? Is it going to be the same?”

  “I don’t know …” (

  “And if it is, so what then? What’s he going to do for us?

  Give us new identities? Change our faces? Change our fingerprints?”

  “I suppose we’ll take a car to Canada, and from there an airplane to Greenland, and then home.”

  Eva’s eyes widened. The enormity of what he was saying suddenly struck her. “Home,” she repeated softly. “Oh, Bobby. The war is lost. Given half the chance, the Russians will overrun - ‘ Germany. When that happens, it won’t be very nice.” She shook her head. “Christ, you said it yourself.”

  Schey took her hands. “When we get to Europe, I’m going to get you to Switzerland. You can stay there until it’s over.” ‘

  “Switzerland? … What the hell do I know about Switzerland?”

  “You don’t have to know a thing, other than it is very pleasant ‘ and you will be safe. No one will hurt you there. And we have plenty of money.” [

  “Bobby, for Christ’s sake, what are you talking about?” she said. “I don’t want to go to Europe. But if I’m going across with you, I’m not going to run off to the mountains to wait it out , while God only knows what’s happening to you.”

  They’d work it out later. Schey knew that when it came right down to it, she would do as he told her_JIe had been with her long enough to understand that, although from time to time she | was able to hold up a tough-guy facade, she was mostly a lonely, frightened little girl who desperately wanted love and direction.

  He would give her both. In abundan
ce.

  They had their breakfast, and Schey read the newspaper afterwards. There was nothing about them. He hadn’t thought there would be, but he had to check. They went down to their train by nine-thirty, but before they went through the gates, Schey held | back for five minutes, watching the people coming and going, watching the ticket takers.

  There were a lot of soldiers around, and pairs of military policemen, with their helmets and armbands, looking for deserters and troublesome soldiers. But there were no cops. No suspicious-looking civilians. No one paying much attention to anything at the ticket barriers other than the tickets.

  He and Eva went through with no trouble, found their car, and inside, the porter helped them with their bags to their compartment.

  He was a black man. Short and very squat. He showed them how to use the tiny sink and told them the toilet was down the corridor. He promised that whenever they were ready to turn in tonight, he would be by to pull down their beds and make them ready.

  “Lunch is from eleven-thirty until one-thirty, dinner from five-thirty to eight-thirty. The club car opens at noon and closes whenever the last dog dies.”

  The man reminded Schey of Rochester on The Jack Benny Show. But then, all Afrikaners sounded that way to him.

  Schey tried to give the porter a tip, but the man turned it away.

  “You’ve never traveled on a train before?”

  Schey shrugged. What the hell had he done? “Never first class,” he said. “It’s sort of our … second honeymoon.”

  “Well … bless my soul. I’ll bring you folks back a little surprise later this evening. Just you wait and see.” The porter laughed. He glanced at Eva and nodded his approval. “Yessiree.

  But if you think I deserve a tip, why you just wait until we hit Chi-town; then you do whatever you think is best.”

  Eva was laughing so hard when the porter left that she doubled over and fell back on the settee.

  “Oh Christ,” she said through her tears. It was the terrible tension they had been under. It had been released in her. “Spies get caught by porter in Denver,” she choked.

  Schey did not see the humor; he knew only that he had screwed up with the man. If and when the FBI came around to checking the trains out of Denver, it would be just the kind of thing they’d be looking for.