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

Uncle Mau, I will not desert Germany.” “Then you will die here,” Maurer said in frustration.

“As so many others have and will. It will not be unique.”

A tear formed in Maurer’s eyes. “Willi, is there nothing I can say to you?”

“Are you my friend? My comrade?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“Then that is enough,” Canaris said. “Now you must return to your office before you are missed.”

Maurer wanted to say more, but he suddenly turned, went back to his car, and moments later was heading down the driveway.

Canaris watched until the car was out of sight, then stepped off the porch and ambled around to the back of the house as Motte came galloping up from the paddock and Kasper and Sabine bounded from the backyard.

Hans Meitner did not return until well after two in the morning.

The house had been settled down for several hours. Canaris was seated in darkness in his study, which faced the long driveway up from the street. The dogs were asleep on the Persian rug at his feet.

Kaulbars had come this afternoon to add his plea to Maurer’s, for Canaris to run. But he had not stayed long.

There had been a few telephone calls later, but very few. The taint was on him now. Anyone associating with him would probably fall as well.

He spotted the flash of headlights in the trees before he actually saw the car. For a few seconds his entire body went rigid with the thought that they were coming for him so soon. It was a favorite Gestapo trick to come for their victims in the middle of the night. He had once heard an officer boast that midnight arrests accounted for an eighty-seven percent increase in immediate confessions. The man had laughed out loud, then added that the statistic included confessions people made for crimes they hadn’t even committed.

The car came into view and parked. Meitner got out.

Canaris met him at the front door and led him around to the study. Once he had the door closed and the heavy curtains drawn over the large windows, he turned on his desk lamp, which threw a soft glow downward, leaving the upper half of the room in shadows.

Meitner looked frightened.

“Bad news, Hans?” Canaris asked.

Meitner nodded. “Meiner Admiral, I …”

Canaris held him off. Now that he knew the flavor, he decided he could wait for a moment or two before he listened to the details. At the sideboard, he poured cognac for both of them..

“Sit down, Hans.”

Meitner sat heavily on the wide couch and tossed his drink back. Canaris refilled his glass, then perched on the edge of his desk.

“Now tell me first, what news of Dieter Schey?”

Meitner seemed surprised by the question. “There is very little news, from what I can gather. He radioed for a rendezvous someplace in New Mexico … that is in the Southwest, I believe.”

New Mexico. The implications were electrifying. Schey had evidently eluded capture in Knoxville and in Washington, D. C., and had somehow made it all the way across the country. That, in spite of the fact the American authorities had his description.

“Was the rendezvous made?”

“No. That is the difficult part. We believe Schey’s contact was arrested some time ago.”

“Then if Schey did make his rendezvous, it would have been a setup. He would be taken.”

“Presumably. But there is no way of verifying it.”

“Why was he given rendezvous instructions in the first place?”

“It slipped through. It was a mistake.”

It took a moment or two for the significance of Meitner’s earlier statement to sink in. When it did, it provided another shock. “We have no one left in the United States?”

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