Heroes

by David Hagberg

  “Good morning, Mrs. Pett,” Deland said.

  She usually made some joke with him, but this morning she barely looked up as she nodded. She keyed the intercom on her desk. “He is here,” she said.

  “Send him in,” the speaker on the unit rasped, and she nodded toward the door.

  “Is something wrong?” Deland asked.

  “I don’t know, but they’re waiting for you in there. Have been since seven this morning.”

  “They?” Deland mumbled. He crossed the room and entered the president’s office just as the rear door that led out into the corridor closed.

  William Donovan, chief of the OSS, was seated behind Fred’s desk. He had come here just like this when he had recruited Deland. That seemed like it had happened half a century ago.

  Deland’s heart skipped a beat. “This is a surprise, sir.”

  “Come in and shut the door, David,” Donovan said..

  Deland closed the door, then crossed the room and took a chair across from Donovan. The OSS chief had aged considerably even since Deland had seen him last, just before Christmas. He did not look very happy now, either.

  “How is your father?”

  “He’s holding his own. He’ll be back to his department in the fall. But you didn’t come here to ask about him.”

  “No,” Donovan said. He was a soft-spoken man. He wore a dark suit and vest, his tie loose. Deland couldn’t remember seeing him looking so tired. So wan.

  “My discharge is final …” Deland began, but Donovan held him off.

  “Hear me out, and then you can decide whatever you want.

  Fair enough?”

  Deland nodded uncertainly. This entire business was frighteningly reminiscent of his recruitment. Donovan was a very persuasive man.

  “We have a problem in Berlin. A very big problem that cannot wait until the end of the war. Especially not until the end.”

  Deland took a deep breath, held it a moment to relieve the tightness in his chest, and then let it out.

  “What I am about to tell you must be considered top secret.”

  “Then don’t tell me,” Deland said, suddenly angry. “I put in my stint over there. I did my thing. I don’t want to know any more.”

  Donovan looked at him for a very long time, his eyes penetrating, sad, weary. The weight of the world was in them. He nodded.

  “All right, David. I guess 1 understand.” He started to rise, but Deland shook his head.

  “I’ll listen, sir, but I’m not guaranteeing a thing.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” Donovan said too quickly. He sat down again.

  “By rights, I could walk out of here right now.”

  Donovan nodded. “We have been working for several years on a weapons project in this country. The British are in on it, but no one else.”

  “Has it anything to do with the Manhattan Project, sir?”

  “Your department is working on it?”

  “We’ve done some of the math. Pump designs. Things like that. Westinghouse and Allis-Chalmers have been up here. Their engineers got themselves backed into a corner.”

  “It’s the same project,” Donovan said. He ran a hand tiredly through his hair. “For at least three years Germany had a spy here in this country. He was very good. So good, in fact, that he managed to gather an awful lot of information that would really hurt our position if it ever got out.”

  “He’s still here? Running around loose?”

  “No,” Donovan said. “Some months ago he managed to get back to Germany.”

  “Good Lord,” Deland said. “He brought his information back for Hitler?”

  “We’re not worried about that.”

  “You’re not?”

  “No. The … project is so vast, requires so much industrial potential, that there is no danger Nazi Germany would ever manage to duplicate our work. No chance.”

  Deland waited. He couldn’t imagine what Donovan wanted.

  “The Russians are very close now to Berlin, where this Dieter Schey is presently stationed.”

  “The Russians?”

  “Yes.” Donovan licked his lips. “It’s possible that Schey, knowing the end is coming, will bargain with his information.

  Bargain with the Russians. We never thought it would come to this.”

  “There is no love lost between the Russians and the Germans.

  Wouldn’t this Schey come back to us instead?”

  “No,” Donovan said, emphatically. “While he was here, he married. His wife … was killed in a shootout with some of our people.”

  “I see.”

  “Less than a year later, he had taken up with another woman, one the FBI had its eyes on in Washington. There was another shootout.”

  “She was killed too?”

  Donovan nodded. “In each case, Schey did a lot of damage to us. He’s killed at least seven people, possibly more. He won’t come back to us. If anything, he’ll go to the Russians.”

  “How soon?”

  “He may have gone already. But surely Berlin will fall within two or three weeks. If it’s not already too late … we have to put someone inside Germany. Someone who knows Berlin. Someone who is intimately familiar with the city the way it has become. Someone who has field experience. Someone to go in there and find Schey.”

  “And kill him?”

  “Before it’s too late,” Donovan said. “Before he turns himself and his information over to the Russians.”

  Deland thought a moment, his insides boiling. “How do we know he’ll go to the Russians?”

  “We don’t, of course,” Donovan admitted. “In fact, there are some indications he would not. But it is a risk we simply cannot take. He must be eliminated. He must! I came here to ask you to take on the job.”

  Deland had been perched on the edge of his chair. He slumped back now, nearly everything going out of him. It was all coming back to him in a rush. It was the oddest of sensations. He I remembered Berlin, and Dannsiger, and Marti Zimmer. He I remembered Peenemunde and Major Preuser, and Von Braun himself. And he vividly saw in his mind’s eye Wolgast and I Katrina Mueller. His heart ached. He could sense her skin, smell her lovely, clean odor, feel her caresses as they made love.

  i In Bern, Dulles and his interrogators had dwelled for an inordil nately long time on Katrina and his relationship with her. Back in the States, in Virginia, the same thing had happened. They seemed less interested in Dannsiger and the business with the underground than they did about poor little Katy in Wolgast.

  By now she was probably dead. The Gestapo almost certainly had gone after her. She could not have held out all this time. He was going to have to put her out of his mind, but God in heaven, he was tied up in knots.

  “I would have to know this morning,” Donovan was saying.

  “You would fly back to Washington with me. Immediately.

  From there you’d take a transport across to London. You’d be I there by tomorrow afternoon. You’d be briefed on the run and parachuted into Berlin by tomorrow night or very early the next morning—still in the dark, of course—at the very latest. You’d be expected to find and take out Schey very quickly. Twenty-four hours would be optimum.”

  “Berlin is a very big city, sir,” Deland said, but he was still thinking about Wolgast, about Katy.

  “Schey’s presence has been confirmed. He was on the radio.

  The Fiihrer awarded him the Iron Cross, in gold. He was promoted to SS-Colonel, as a hero of the Reich. He’s a symbol over there now. And he’s become Hitler’s lapdog. He’ll almost certainly be somewhere around the Chancellery or the Reichs Bunker.

  He won’t be far.”

  “What sort of cover would I have, and how about afterwards?

  What arrangements would be made for me to get out?”

  “You would be an SS colonel with a letter of passage signed by Hitler himself. Your mission is to inspect every aspect of the preparations for the defense of Berlin. You could go anywhere,
commandeer any vehicle, any soldier, any supply. Your word would be next to that of the Fuhrer’s.”

  That brought Deland out of his thoughts. He sat forward again.

  “My God. a simple call to the bunker and I would be exposed as an imposter.”

  “You have to understand, David, that at this moment the situation is very critical in Germany. Especially in Berlin. We’re betting that no one will stop to question your orders.”

  “So I find Schey and I … eliminate him,” Deland said without thinking about what Donovan had just told him. “Then what? How do I get out of there?”

  “Using your Fiihrer-orders, you commandeer a vehicle and make your way north.”

  “North?”

  Donovan nodded. “The Baltic Sea. Pomeranian Bay. A submarine would be standing by to pick you up.”

  Deland’s stomach tightened. “Exactly where? That is a long coastline.”

  “Just offshore from Heringsdorf. It is a small town …”

  Deland closed his eyes tightly. “My God, I know Heringsdorf. It is south of Koserow. Not twenty miles from …” Deland opened his eyes.

  Donovan nodded. But he didn’t look too happy. “South of Wolgast.”

  “You’re bargaining with me.”

  “There is room for two on the submarine.”

  “Oh … shit,” Deland said. He got up. His legs were wobbly.

  “Oh shit,” he said again. He went to the door where he stopped, his hand on the knob. He looked back. Donovan had turned around and was staring out the windows across Lake Mendota.

  Most of the ice had gone out.

  “I’m sorry, David,” Donovan said.

  “I’ll get my things. Where shall I meet you?”

  “Truax Field. The operations shack on the flight line,” Donovan said. He turned back. “Don’t be long.”

  His father had been sleeping when he left and his mother was at the store, so he wrote a short note and left it for his parents with the nurse. He was glad it worked out this way. Driving down East Washington Avenue out toward the airfield, he glanced up as the capitol building disappeared in a whirl of snow behind him.

  His months home had been strange. He had not been able to settle into any kind of a routine. He understood that he had changed, of course, but he had not realized the extent of his change until Donovan had shown up.

  The snow seemed to part, and he glimpsed the capitol building in the rearview mirror, its dome patterned after the U.S. capitol dome in Washington. It was lit by floodlights.

  He’d never be able to come back here. There was nothing left for him. Certainly not his friends. They had nothing in common with him any longer. Not his parents. They had taught him as a child that he had to make his mark in the world. And certainly he would not come back to the university. He felt as if he had gone as far in academe as he cared to.

  It only worried him that he might never find a place that would be right for him. Everything was so damned lonely. Frightening.

  The MPs at the gate had been given his name so that after he signed in he was waved through. He drove out to the flight line, where he parked behind base ops, left the keys in the ignition, and went around to the front door.

  Donovan was waiting inside for him, along with the crew of the DCS waiting on the apron.

  “You made it.”

  “Are we going to take off in this?” Deland asked.

  The pilot, a captain, shrugged. “Depends on how badly you two want to get to Washington.”

  “Badly,” Donovan said dryly.

  “Then we’ll go right now. It’s not supposed to get any better.”

  Deland tossed his keys to the sergeant behind the desk. “It’s the ‘38 Chevy out back.”

  “I’ll take care of it for you, sir; don’t you worry about it.”

  “Yeah.” Deland winked. “I don’t think I will … worry, that is.”

  Donovan carried only a briefcase with him. They shuffled through the snow out to the aircraft, then climbed in while the pilot and his crew made their preflight checks. The gusty wind rocked the plane. They could see their breath even inside the main cabin. It didn’t seem to bother Donovan.

  “Here’s some reading for you,” he said, handing Deland several thick file folders when they were settled in their seats.

  As soon as they took off, Deland started through the material, a life history of Dieter Schey, the man he was going to Germany to kill. At various spots throughout the dossier, whoever had compiled the files admitted by notes that certain items of information were purely guesswork, while others were even less significant—nothing more than speculation, at best. ;

  Schey’s father was a baron, which technically made Schey Prussian royalty. He had been educated in the best academies, had had the best of tutors, and had been the most brilliant student ever graduated from the Abwehr’s schools, including a place called Park Zorgvliet. There were several photographs of him, showing a good looking, well-built man who could have been mistaken anywhere for a well-to-do American or an Englishman.

  “Where’d we get this information, sir?” Deland asked. “I thought all their agents were mystery men with clean slates.”

  “Dulles got it.”

  “He speaks English, of course.”

  “His English is perfect … almost too perfect,” Donovan^ said.

  The plane was bouncing all over the place. They had been in the air for nearly three hours. Deland was stiff from holding i himself against the motion, and his eyes were very tired from { reading in the harsh, imperfect light.

  He looked up and smiled tiredly. “His Oxford tutors. How’d r he get around it here?” I

  “Everyone thought he was from Connecticut. Or Massachusetts.”

  “He’s a good engineer, from what I gather.”

  “He’s bright, David. Very bright, and very dangerous. He knows his own strengths, as well as our weaknesses.”

  “Our weaknesses, sir?”

  “Our sense of fair play. Our sense of sympathy for the underdog.

  He’ll play it to the hilt. He’s a devil.”

  Deland had read all the files. He remembered every word. He i had gotten a far different impression from his reading than he had from Donovan’s description. He shook his head.

  “What is it? What bothers you?” Donovan asked.

  “Schey is not … he’s not a murderer.” Donovan sighed deeply and looked out the window. The DC3 was set up for passenger service. They were the only two aboard except for the crew. They sat across the narrow aisle from each other.

  “He’s a highly decorated Nazi. He’s killed a lot of people.”

  “I’ve killed a couple.”

  Donovan turned back. “It’s different, David,” he snapped.

  “Vastly different, and don’t you ever think differently. We’re talking about freedom now, democracy versus a terrible regime that thinks nothing of murdering innocent women and children.

  Gassing them to death and then incinerating their bodies in ovens. My God, the difference, staggers the imagination.”

  It was Deland’s turn to loot away. Schey was a German. But he was not a killer of women and children. In fact, from what he had read, Schey had killed only in self-defense.

  “If you’re not one-hundred-percent sure about this, we will find someone else.”

  Deland looked back. “I’ll go. I’ll do the job,” he said. He glanced down at the files. “It says here he has a son. In Knoxville.”

  “He abandoned the boy.”

  After we killed his son’s mother, Deland thought. But he didn’t say it aloud.

  The day was very gray and chilly. Canaris was feeling weak this morning. It was a Thursday, he thought. It had been four days since the corporal had damaged his nose. He had not been questioned again, but the corporal had kept up his relentless pressure. These days his rations had been cut to a bowl of coffee and only one slice of bread and jam, morning and night, although [ he still received a small bowl of thin soup at noo
n.

  He hunched into his overcoat as he sniffed the air, then stepped out into the exercise yard.

  His SS guards stepped out of the bunker behind him but remained by the door. One of them lit a cigarette and told some joke. Canaris didn’t hear it.

  The Kommandantur Arrest was a long, low stone building. It contained forty cells, and even from the outside the building looked ominous. There were times when he was absolutely cer-i tain that he would die here. But there were other times when his natural optimism soared, and he knew he would survive. It was at those times that he would cock an ear to listen for the sounds of distant gunfire signifying that the Americans would soon be t crashing through the camp gates. I The exercise yard for the bunker was on the south side of the camp. The execution yard and crematoria were on the north. Last night he had been awake, looking out his open window, when he * realized that a soft gray ash was falling from the sky.

  For a long time he had watched the falling ash, and then he stuck out his hand to catch some of it. Suddenly he realized what it was. The crematorium was working. The ash was … He had fallen back inside with revulsion and thrown himself on his bunk, his spirits lower than they had been since his arrest.

  There was still a slight odor in the air this morning, a disagreeably sweet, burned odor that turned his stomach when he stopped to think about it.

  He walked directly away from the building toward the stone fence. He was not allowed to come within five meters of it, but he always went as close as he could, merely to keep his guards on their toes. It had become a game with him, whose meaning he could no longer remember. But he played it anyway, mostly out of habit.

  He had looked closely at his face this morning while shaving.

  The swelling around his broken nose had already started to go down, but a terrible gray pallor had come to his slack skin. He had lost too much weight. His health would suffer permanently if his conditions did not change soon, he decided, the irony of the thought escaping him at the moment.

  His thoughts flitted randomly from his face to his rations, then to the falling ash, but always they dwelled around the same theme: the physical discomforts of his imprisonment. No longer was he so concerned about his defense strategy. Stawitzky was not the ignorant buffoon he had let on to be. He did not yet have enough evidence for a conviction; it was the only reason Canaris was still alive. But he was a skillful Kriminalrat who knew how to use fear to break a man’s will.