Heroes by David Hagberg (books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

“In the bedroom. Crawl back into the closet. I’ll stall him to give you time.”

“Any chance he suspects you?” Schey asked. “He might put it together if he does.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Now get the hell out of here.”

Someone pounded on the door. “Eva, it’s me!”

Schey slipped into her bedroom, which was just off a short corridor that led back to a bathroom. He closed the door most of the way, then went around the bed to the closet.

“I saw him coming up here,” Montisier bellowed.

“You saw who?” Eva asked tiredly. She was a good actress.

“Don’t lie to me, damn you!”

“I’m not …”

“Bitch,” the man shouted, and Schey could hear the sharp sound of a slap. Eva cried out and a table or something fell over.

Schey turned away from the closet and went back to the door.

He peered through the crack. The husky man stood over Eva, who had fallen over the coffee table and lay sprawled in a heap on the floor. She was sobbing. There was blood trickling from her mouth and nose.

“Bitch,” the man hissed again. He turned. His overcoat was open, his fat belly gross. “You’ve got him in your bed, I’ll bet.”

Schey stepped back away from the door, his muscles bunching up into knots. He kept seeing Catherine lying in the middle of the floor. Dead. Blood over the front of her nightgown.

Montisier was charging the bedroom door as Eva was struggling to her knees.

“Bernard … no,” she cried.

The door slammed open, and the husky man stumbled in.

Schey hit him very hard in the solar plexus; then, as he went down, Schey brought the side of his right hand back in a vicious chop to the man’s throat, crushing his windpipe, cutting off his air and any sound he might make.

He hit the floor in a limp, crumpled heap, but immediately he began thrashing around, clawing at his throat, trying for oxygen he would never get.

Eva was at the door, the entire side of her face filled with blood. “Oh Jesus,” she said.

The man bumped his knee against the door frame; his entire body stiffened, and with a slight gurgling sound in the back of his throat, he lay back, his eyes open and his struggles ceased.

He was dead.

“Oh Jesus,” Eva said again. “Oh Jesus H. Christ.”

Someone pounded at the door. “Hey, you! Eva Braun, you bitch, what’s going on in there?”

Eva shoved Schey back into her bedroom, shut the door on him, and rushed across the living room.

Schey opened the door a crack and looked out as Eva yanked open her front door.

“What the hell is going on up here?” a fat woman in a print dress shouted. “You’re disturbing the entire building. I warned you time and again about this. Damn. I warned you I’d kick you out of here.”

“You’re jealous because you don’t have a man of your own, you fat slob!” Eva screeched.

The fat woman stepped back a pace, her mouth opening in a perfect circle.

“Get out of here before I have Bernard kick your fat ass up around your shoulders,” Eva shouted. “He’s in the mood, let me tell you.”

“Oh …“the fat woman said in a suddenly small voice, and she turned and hurried off. Eva slammed the door, locked it, then turned around and leaned against it.

Schey came out into the living room. “I’m sorry,” he said. He had ruined everything for her.

“Don’t look so tragic, sport.”

Deland knew damned well what the brief message was without having to decode it, and it made him angry to think that he was being dismissed just like that. They wanted him out. The message was only three words: GET OUT NOW or GET OUT IMMEDIATELY, or something to that effect. But he wasn’t ready, damn it. Not yet.

For a long time he sat, his back to the tree, listening to the hiss and static in his earphones. Waiting for his control officer to continue. But there was nothing.

Schlechter had been feeding him a lot of information lately.

Good things on fuel systems. Von Braun himself had moved in with Schlechter’s section. They were light years ahead of anything Dulles had guessed.

Just two nights ago, Rudy and his girl, Maria, had invited Deland and Katrina Mueller to their apartment for dinner. Rudy had quite a bit to drink, and as the evening progressed, he had begun bragging.

It wasn’t like Schlechter, or at least like nothing Deland had ever seen. But as the night progressed, Deland began to get the feeling that he was seeing the real Rudy. The man was exceedingly lonely, it seemed. His jokes, and finally his bragging, were his means of attracting and holding friends. Deland felt sorry for the man, but he did not stop him. Schlechter had provided him with a wealth of information.

Besides, he had not wanted to break the spell of the evening.

Had he, it would have meant Katrina would have gone home.

Deland shivered. He raised the microphone to his lips and spoke a single word: “No.” Then he flipped the set off, got stiffly to his feet, and pulled the wire antenna out of the trees. He repacked the radio so that it once again looked like a scientific calculator.

It was very cold. Two days ago the weather had cleared, and the temperatures had plunged. Last night it had reached to below zero. It hadn’t gotten much warmer today.

Deland hooked the radio’s leather strap around the handlebars of his bicycle, pulled on his mittens, and walked his bike out of the protection of the narrow stand of trees above the road that led north from Wolgast along the river.

About nine miles out, at the headland, was the Germans’ new radar station. He had been told specifically to stay well clear of the place. Bern was saving it for something. Either they had another man in here or they were planning on bombing it soon.

In any event, it wasn’t Deland’s problem.

It was just a dirt road, but a lot of the fishermen lived out this