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

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