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

“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.

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